This tutorial describes the steps how to create a simple Mimosa file for a small school. For the most part, these topics do not describe alternative ways to do things. The purpose is to show the easiest and most straightforward path of creating a small Mimosa file.
All four Mimosa views (Components, Courses, Weeks, Timetables) access the same file from a different angle. You can always view and edit the data in any order you like.
You can change the current view by clicking the appropriate button on top of the screen.
These are the main steps:
Select File|New to indicate that you are going to create a new empty file. The application then prompts you to select from a set of various configuration or default files the one that you are going to use. You can change all fields in the .cfw files, but you can minimise the input by choosing the file that resemble the language you are speaking. For this example, double-click english.cfw from the list of files to open it. (All texts that are printed or displayed for other users can be defined with the language and terminology that has previously been used in your institution).
You can use the command File|Language to store a new setting file or use an existing one. Normally, this file is selected only at the start of the process. All the texts and other parameters are saved along with the Mimosa binary file (filename.mfw). When you next time select File|Open to read the file you saved, all parameters are restored.
If your school is multilingual, it is easy to print the same reports with different text versions by using the selections in File|Language and you can create your own options file for your needs.
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 to 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 [x] Align Mimosa weeks with calendar, 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 Options by clicking Accept button and go to Components view.
In this view you input the resources (or components) of your institution - items from the categories classes, teachers, rooms, subjects, students or equipment that you can define in Options|Categories. The types of components are different in each environment, but in schools typically at least teachers and rooms are used.
Mimosa can be applied (and has been applied) in several environments, not only schools and universities. Components and component categories can be built freely for any specific need. Here are few typical examples of the ways how Mimosa has been used:
You can add new components by the Edit|Insert selection or by pressing the [Insert] key. With each component, you associate a unique code of at most 15 characters, a descriptive name of at most 63 characters and select the appropriate category from the list of available categories.
Use Edit|Modify or [Enter] to modify and Edit|Delete or [Delete] to delete a component. Replace the suggested code and name fields "ComponentX" with your own.
After creating a couple of arbitrary components from each predefined categories Classes, Teachers and Rooms, Components view looks the one below:
Note that the first column (#) is a running number intended to help you to keep track of the number of components that have been inserted so far and (*) contains the shortcut of the category. You cannot change the MAX, SUM, DONE or LINKS fields in this window, since they are automatically maintained by the application. When courses are inserted, the lectures are allocated to weeks and finally they are inserted into timetables. Their meaning will become clear in the upcoming stages.
Go next to Courses view.
The next task is to define the teaching requirements, meetings or courses in your school. Their timing is defined later on in Timetables view. If you have defined more than one term (or week) in the school year, you have to allocate the lectures of the courses to terms in Weeks view, before you can assign them into timetables. If you apply same timetables through the whole planning period, you can pass the allocation stage and go directly to Timetables view.
Mimosa allows you to define all kind of combinations from class-based teaching to all kind of split and combined groups. The courses are the core of the school and the data file and there are several ways to create them. For a school you might need to create from 50 to 2000 courses to define all its lectures.
Click [Insert] to create new courses. Use Add button in that window to move the selected components from the right-hand list (green) to the left-hand list (blue), and Remove button to do the reverse operation. You can also Swap two components between the both lists. You can pick several components at once by keeping the [Ctrl] button pressed while clicking the components with the mouse. After creating a couple of courses, courses view should look like the one below:
Selected components (typically one class, teacher and room) for the course are on the blue box on the left and those which are still selecteable are on the green box on the right.
Components of this course (3):
All selectable components (10):
With a similar procedure you can create all courses of your school, and in most cases courses consist of a class, teacher and room, but there are other combinations. If the teacher is required to teach pupils from two classes simultaneously, both classes are added to the left-hand list. Below are examples of different types of course collections:
Note that when there are two or more classes and teachers that should be connected together, it helps to view the setting in a form of a table as follows:
Note that the structures of the collections you define for courses are special cases of the above 4x3 matrix. In most cases, there is only one row and one column, and in some cases one row or one column.
Using of subjects as components in courses is basically descriptive and voluntary, and recommended in mixed courses as the one below. 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 course collection, 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:
Use the arrow keys to move the component up or down on the list to get the desired result. The same order is used when timetables are printed.
If you are about to schedule the timetables to several weeks/terms, you should go Weeks view. Here we first assume that you have only one year in the school year and you can directly go to Timetables view to assign the lectures into timetables.
If there exists at least one course with one more components, you can start assigning lectures into timetables. The maximum number of weeks is set to one (=1) in Options|Limits - as in this example - there is no need to go to Weeks view to allocate the lectures to weeks or terms since it is done automatically.
Click first [F3] to locate the next timetable which contains at least one unassigned lecture. This timetable (master timetable) will then be located in the top-left corner of this window where you modify its content. All other timetables you see in this window are automatically loaded according to the course that is currently activated.
At the start you should see the master timetable full of green check marks to indicate that you can assign a lecture anywhere in the timetable. Double-click a slot to assign and remove a lecture. You can anytime change the current timetable on top of of the master timetable and continue double-clicking the lectures of the selected timetable. Note that when assigning or removing a slot, it is automatically synchronised with all other components of the current course.
You can either continue assigning the lectures of the current course in the timetable or select a new (unassigned) course from the list just below the master timetable and then double-click a cell where you want to assign a lecture into. When you have progressed in assigning the lectures, you may note that all cells are not anymore available and a stop mark is displayed. This is due to the other related components that are being automatically assigned and typically you have less chances to assign and the task becomes more complicated when you are approaching the end of the process.
After you have assigned all the lectures in all timetables, the screen looks like the one below:
Examples of the symbols that are used in timetable cells to indicate their status (their appeareance can be changed in View|Cell dislay options):
This cell is EMPTY, and there are no courses activated, or all courses connected with this timetable have been inserted.
The active course can be inserted in this EMPTY cell.
The active course cannot be inserted in this EMPTY cell.
Course SEA646 is inserted in this cell.
The active cell contains a booking (of type Meeting).
The simplest way to modify the cells of timetables is to double-click them. The status of the cell is changed and the application takes care of everything what follows and also gives you hints what you can do and why. Here are some examples:
marks a cell where a lecture can be assigned.
Double-click that cell to assign or remove a lecture. The application shows all other components connected with the course and prevents of making double-bookings. The number in the brackets indicates the desirability of this slot with respect to the number of the gaps it will eliminate.
marks a cell where the assignment of a lecture is prohibited.
Double-click that cell to find out the reason why the assignment is impossible. You can also clear this cell, although the lecture is not currently activated. The number in the brackets indicates the number of timetables preventing the assignment.
There are several ways to navigate across the timetables. You can double-click any other timetable on the screen or use the arrow down and up keys or pull-down menu to change the current timetable. Click the (yellow) list of courses below the timetable to activate another unassigned course or double-click the (blue) list of collection to move to another timetable.
After assigning lectures into timetables, you can move them around with [F7] and [Shift+F7] or make/cancel bookings in a painted area with [SPACE] or [Ctrl+O]. It is also possible to swap lectures of two courses by pressing [F6], if that option is permitted.
You can also Undo or Redo all changes by pressing [Ctrl+Z] or [Ctrl+Y], respectively. See the Edit command for the extensions to these commands.
Once you have assigned lectures into the timetables, you can monitor your work by viewing the statistics on the screen and when the last lecture is assigned, you will be informed about it. After at least one lecture of some course has been assigned into the timetables, you can go to File|Print selection and start printing the timetables,
If your institution has more than one term in the planning period, active next the Weeks view which is used to allocate the lectures of the courses across weeks and reuse the same course structures several times. If you create only one set of timetables, this view is not needed.
This view is intended to help in the allocation of the lectures of courses to several terms and to enable to reuse them during the school year. You can change the number of terms in the selection Options|Limits to some number from the range 1 to 255 or to click the grid on some of the columns on the grid, which are not used yet.
Note that it is a natural order to go through the views roughly in order Options->Components->Courses->Weeks->Timetables->Print when you create a new file, and you have more than one term/week in the planning period.
The rows of the week grid correspond to the courses and the columns to the weeks or terms in the school year. If you have terms of varying lengths (often calendar weeks), you can change the number of terms in Lengths(x) cell and the name of the term by clicking the corresponding top row of this grid.
There are a wide variety of courses how they should be allocated to weeks. Some courses are used only once, whereas others are used in each term and so on.
Suppose that you have entered the numbers 12,6,9 and 10 as the lengths of four terms (corresponding to 37 calendar weeks). The task is to allocate the 54 hours of lectures to weeks so that the equation
54 = 12 x h1 + 6 x h2 + 9 x h3 + 10 x h4
is satisfied. In this case there are many solutions like (h1,h2,h3,h4)=(0,9,0,0) or (h1,h2,h3,h4)=(2,0,0,3).
In Weeks view the user can find the appropriate numbers of lectures per week easily, since Mimosa prevents of making any logical errors. Double-clicking the grid shows/hides another window on top of the grid showing the result of the allocation to the components of the active course and helps to create balanced load for teachers, classes and rooms for each term.
After allocating the courses, you can start creating timetables in Timetables view. When you have timetabled the first week, you can copy the results to other weeks (in Weeks view) with the Edit|Copy week and Edit|Paste week Special|Timetables to this week commands. Note that although the weeks (or terms) are not identical, this option allows to copy as many assigned lectures to other weeks as it is legally possible, and it can save a lot of work if different weeks have some similarities.
To create completely identical copies of some week to another week, use the commands Edit|Copy week and Edit|Paste week instead.
The next task is to print the timetables on printer or as HTML-files to be published on the web.
Below is a tab from print and web settings which enable users to tailor their timtables and other reports in preferred way.
Sample output format of one the many report layouts that are available.
| Ballantine, Jeanne (Form-C) A3, 30.10.10-15.12.10 | |||||
| [^] | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
| 8 am |
|
|
COM638 Composition Sarandon, S. ROOM 230 | STR308 Structures of Wood Davis, G. (8 am) ROOM 204 | PRA651 Practical Training I Newman, P. ROOM 241 |
| 9 am | STR308 Structures of Wood Davis, G. | HUM514 Human Resource Management Voigt, J. ROOM 234 | |||
| 10 am | DIA756 Diability Field, S. ROOM 335 | PRA651 Practical Training I Newman, P. ROOM 241 | COM638 Composition Sarandon, S. ROOM 230 | ||
| 11 am | HUM514 Human Resource Management Voigt, J. ROOM 234 | STR308 Structures of Wood Davis, G. (11 am) ROOM 205 | HUM514 Human Resource Management Voigt, J. ROOM 234 | HUM514 Human Resource Management Voigt, J. ROOM 234 | |
| 12 pm | STR308 Structures of Wood Davis, G. (12 pm) ROOM 203 (1 pm) ROOM 111 | DIA756 Diability Field, S. ROOM 335 |
|
SWE492 Swedish for Marketing Caine, M. Voigt, J. ROOM 307 ROOM 311 Swedish Course | STR308 Structures of Wood Davis, G. (12 pm) ROOM 203 (1 pm) ROOM 203 |
| 1 pm | GIL324 Gilding Hawn, G. ROOM 328 |
|
|||
| 2 pm |
|
PHY717 Physiology of Clothing Caine, M. ROOM 242 |
|
PHY717 Physiology of Clothing Caine, M. ROOM 242 | COM638 Composition Sarandon, S. ROOM 230 |
| 3 pm |
|
|
MET95 Methods of the Aged Hackmann, G. Streep, M. ROOM 206 ROOM 241 | ||
| Mimosa Scheduling Software | Mimosa Version 4.0 dd.mm.yy hh:mm |
Clipboard represents one of the many productive tools in Mimosa which enable you to input your data fast, if they are stored in a spreadsheet application. Using Clipboard you can also create statistics in over 40 formats which are helpful in calculating lectures and costs.
In most cases it is more productive to input your data with the help of the Clipboard. Use your favourite spreadsheet application, input your data there and copy it onto the Clipboard, then go to Mimosa and paste it from the Clipboard there.
1. In your spreadsheet program, input the following table:
2. Paint the above area and select Edit|Copy (or equivalent) to copy it onto the Clipboard.
3. Go to Mimosa and activate Components view (click the button on top of the screen).
4. Select Edit|Paste from the Clipboard - 9 new components should appear.
5. Go to the spreadsheet program, input then the basic information of the following 7 courses:
6. Paint the above area and select Edit|Copy (or equivalent) to copy it onto the Clipboard.
7. Go to Mimosa and activate Courses view (click the button on top of the screen).
8. Select Edit|Paste from the Clipboard|1 Codes, names, categories and MAX - the list of 7 courses should now appear.
9. To add also the components to courses via Clipboard, go to the spreadsheet program and input the following table:
10. Paint the above area and select Edit|Copy (or equivalent) to copy it onto the Clipboard.
11. Select (in Courses view) Edit|Paste from the Clipboard|2 Replace collections to add components to the courses.
After this operation, you should have 9 components and 7 courses. Steps 9-11 are often easier to perform in Courses window, since the application checks that the components to be added to courses are valid in cases when lectures already have been assigned into timetables.