Topic 3 of 10
Topic 3 of 10
When creating a new file, the Options window should now automatically open. You can use this selection always when you are about to change some of the parameters, texts and preferences in your file. If you want to extend the time frame or change the categories of components or some texts, select Options and choose the tab that describes the parameter that you are going to change.
In the first tab Options|Limits you will define the maximum number of terms in the school year, days in a week and the number of time-periods in each day. For our simple example, assume that we have only one term in the school year, 5 days in the week and we need only 8 slots in each day. For this special case, you can simply press the button One-term school year? and then change the Time-periods from its default value 10 to 8. Note that the application allows a much larger capacity for the time frame that we will use here.
If you have weekly terms in your school (every week is different from each other), you might like to define the maximum number of weeks or terms to about 40, and if you have a two-week schedule, define the number of weeks to 2 (for odd and even weeks). It is also possible to include several school years in one file by defining the number of terms up to 255.
Next, click the Time tab. Here you can change the names for the Days of week and Time periods to suit you school. You can easily edit them by just clicking those fields in the Weeks and Timetables window.
If you check Replace weeks by dates, you can use the timetables like a real calendar. You just select First date of first week and when you change the lengths of weeks, the application automatically calculates the date range for each term in the school year, and it can also be used in all reports. Note that you can define a different length for each term, if some of the successive calendar (or holiday) weeks in your school follow the same pattern, and you want to keep your calendar synchronised. (You do not normally use these date options in the one-term school year case.)
In the third tab Categories you will describe the characteristics of your school. The categories for Components (or basic resources of the school) are probably those what you would expected to be same in all schools (classes, teachers, rooms), but other texts in this page might need your adjustments. You do not need to use all resource types that are listed for components as defaults.
It is a good practice to categorise also the courses to better reflect the needs of your school. You can categorise them by level, type, size of the group, number of lectures, location, priority or any other criteria you might later on use for sorting or selection purposes.
You have three types of booking texts to mark those slots in the timetables of components, which you want to protect from assigning of lectures into (Bookings for timetables), and also three types of booking texts for courses to protect their lectures from allocating to inappropriate weeks (Bookings for courses).
Categories of courses and components are always of the form X:Categoryname, where the letter X stands as the abbreviation for the name of that category on screen and the name Categoryname is used reports instead. The category letter X does not to be unique, but it is a good practice to select it so that it describes the associated category.
Leave now Options by clicking Accept and go to Components view.