2.5 Advanced Schedule Generation and Editing

Upon having generated a schedule with all of the information from the databases, the system will display the following screen.

Figure 2.5.1 Initial view of the system after the data has been scheduled

The initial view that the Scheduler provides is list view. Scenarios going over viewing the schedule is described in the Viewing section. In the main window, you have buttons to change views and a search field in the upper right hand corner. In the front and center is the list view table. When the databases have been filled and the administrator clicks the "Generate" button, there will actually be scheduled items to look at.For now, the table is empty because no information has been stored in the databases.

"Good" and "bad" schedules are defined as follows. Based on the databases and the instructor preferences, the scheduler will attempt to satisfy the instructor preferences equally while not breaking any constraints. A good schedule is a schedule that uses up all the database entries while simultaneously fulfilling Instructor WTU requirements. Also, a good schedule will rotate through the instructor database and give every instructor the opportunity for one of their time/course preferences.
A bad schedule is one that doesn't use up all the database items or that favors certain professors over others in terms of how many preferences the scheduler was able to grant them.

Within the table are multiple columns. Here they are described from left to right:

• Lock: Lock the current scheduled item in place. The value in this column is a checkbox that the admin can either check or not. When it is checked, the Instructor, Room, and Course will be permanetly assigned to the current time allotment.
  This scheduled item cannot be changed until the admin unchecks the box.
• Course Number: The course identifier. An example of this is "CSC 101".
• Last Name: The instructor's last name.
• First Name: The instructor's first name.
• Bldg: The building the course will be held in.
• Rm: The room the course will be held in.
• Start: What time the class starts.
• End: What time the class is over.
• Days: The days of the week the class is held.
• Course WTU: How many work time units the class takes up.
• Instructor WTU: How many work time units the given professor is allowed.
• Max Enroll: The maximum amount of students are allowed to be enrolled in the class
• Rm Cap: The amount of students that the room can hold at once

Any one of the columns can be used to sort the information in the table. Clicking on the column head once will sort the scheduled items by the column information in ascending (alphabetical) order. Clicking on the column head once more will reverse the sort. In this list view, only the most important values have columns in the table. The viewing and editing section explores how to view and edit all the values of a scheduled item.

The scenarios in this section depict a user viewing and making adjustments to the schedule that has been generated by the system.

• 2.5.1 Constraints
• 2.5.2 Viewing, editing, and moving scheduled items
• 2.5.3 Per-Term Database Tweaks and Regenerating
• 2.5.4 Conflict Resolution