This set of questions and answers represent some of the typical issues when using Mimosa. You can always press [F1] to get help about the current topic. It is also recommended to double-click the screen on the element that you are working with or clicking the right mouse button to display the pop-up menu. When you press [Ctrl+H], you can always get information of the active course and to modify it.
Yes, you can. Mimosa works on ANY network or with single PCs, and the maximum number of simultaneous users is currently 255 (within the same site license). Mimosa synchronises (or merges) the files of several users on demand, and accessing the same file by several users in the same time is not recommended. See topic File|Network more closely.
When setting bookings into individual cells (or removing them), it is simplest to click [Space] on the cell in Master timetable in Timetables view. When changing the booking status of a range of cells, paint the area in the Master timetable and click the booking button. You can perform the same operation in Weeks view and in selection Tools|Show timetables, where it is also easy to Copy and Paste bookings of single timetables across all timetables and weeks.
Select Options|Categories to change the texts (Bookings for components). The easiest way to do it instantly is to click [Ctrl+O] in Weeks or Timetables view.
In selection Options|Limits you first paint the cells in the timetable area marked as, select the booking type from the three available choices and then click either [Make bookings]or [Cancel bookings]. You are then prompted to select the timetables you are supposed to modify, and the weeks (if you have timetables in several weeks). This technique enables to set bookings to specific day (all day events) and to all timetables at once.
If you want to copy the bookings of single timetables from one to week to other weeks, you can do it in Tools|Show timetables. If you want to copy the bookings from all timetables of entire week to another week, activate Weeks view, click the grid at the week where you want to copy the bookings from. Select then Edit|Copy week to mark it as the source week. Click then the grid at the week where you like to copy the bookings to and select Edit|Paste week Special|Bookings to this week.
You have to organise the data in a simple manner in your spreadsheet program and use the clipboard to transfer the data. Mimosa offers tenths to ways to copy its data back to spreadsheet applications. You find the appropriate commands normally under the Edit menu of the current window (Copy onto the Clipboard, Paste from the Clipboard). See the chapter Clipboard for details.
Invoke the spreadsheet application and Mimosa and try out the following:
In the simplest case, the courses consist typically of one class C, teacher T and room R. If the class of 13+17 pupils is split for two teachers T1 and T2 (and two rooms R1 and R2), the list of components in this course contains them all: C, T1, T2, R1, R2.
Using the notations of the previous question, the course contains four components: the two classes C1, C2 (with 28 and 32 pupils), the teacher T and room R: C1, C2, T, R.
When describing the different kind of teaching requirements with the help of course collections, we often face the problem that the classes (or group of students) are not defined in similar fashion in all instances. Other components like teachers and rooms remain more stable and indivisible.
The most common way to define those set of mixed courses containing several teachers and classes is to include all classes (C1,C2,C3,C4), teachers (T1,T2,T3) and rooms (R1,R2,R3) in the same course. The application neither knows nor cares which one of the pupils is attending the lectures of each teacher. The course, when defined in this way, keeps always all classes (and other components) occupied at the same time, and the list of components is: C1, C2, C3, C4, T1, T2, T3, R1, R2, R3.
The order of the components is not relevant, you could also list them as C1, C2, C3, C4, T1, R1, T2, R2, T3, R3 to emphasize in timetables where each teacher is located.
Using of subjects as components in courses is basically descriptive, infromative and voluntary, and recommended in mixed courses as the one below. The name of the course normally tells to others the necessary information about the event. If the course structure is simple, the course name is often used instead do describe the course content. Adding a set of subjects (S1,S2,S3) to the course tells the readers of the timetable what the teachers are doing. The subjects can also be used as comments and for statistical reasons to count the sums of lectures of different types. By default, subjects are not (naturally) conflict-checked, which enables to teach some subject simultaneously by different courses.
When you add the subjects to the courses, you can insert them where the corresponding teachers and rooms are, to make them more readable in printouts. Below are samples from some typical layouts:
Add the students in Components view, using the category of P:Students, for instance; (define and or change this category name in Options|Categories). If you denote the students by symbols P1, P2, P3,... you should then have courses with collections of the type (T, R, P1, P2, P3,..., Pn), where the number n of the students varies (typically in the range from 20 to 40).
When defining courses, it is not necessary to specify all the students immediately. As with any other component, you can add them later according to preferences and limitations caused by other courses and bookings. In Components view or Courses view you can then modify the student-course relationships with the Edit|Modify menu selection, and the application takes care about preventing of conflicts. You can also take the more advanced Tools|Modify collections selection into use, where you can view the timetables simultaneously when creating and removing connections between courses and components.
If your course has only one room, you can use the selection Tools|Select rooms manually to assign the lectures in different rooms. Check that you have not included any rooms in the course collection - otherwise you cannot use this option. In Timetables window, you can also easily change the manual room assignment on the fly by [Ctrl+R]. Manually selected rooms can always be overwritten by normal room selections or room bookings, so it is advisable to try to assign those leftovers after other courses have taken their places. There is also a maximum limit of 10’290 of lectures that can be assigned manually.
Following the steps below can do changing the course structure from a certain week on:
Activate Weeks view and click the grid on the term that is going to be split. Select then Edit|Split week to create two identical weeks with different lengths (of 5 and 2 week). Give a name for the new term and modify them if necessary.
In selection Options|Time you can enter any texts (up to 11 characters) to represent the layout of your schedule. You can also change them in Timetables view, by clicking the appropriate cell on the Master timetable. Some schools use descriptive texts instead of time-periods (like hh:mm-hh:mm), and some have extremely varied class or teacher based time-periods (causing restrictions for other timetables).
Mimosa supports only one set of time periods for each file (30 slots, 11 charcters for each slot). If they vary (by classes or day, for instance), it is a good practice to use letters (A, B, C, ..., J) or some other convenient symbols instead of time-periods and map them to the time-periods of each class (or teacher) and day of week.
Go to the Timetables view and then activate the timetable of some of the teachers. Selecting Edit|Copy onto the Clipboard|6 Free slots in timetables copies on the Clipboard the free slots of all timetables of the current category (in this case, those of the teachers). Paste the selection then onto your spreadsheet application.