Reports window (File|Print)

In the selection Print you can print the contents of components and courses (codes, names, lectures) and timetables or convert them to HTML-file format, which enables the browsers to view and print the reports, or copy them to the internet or intranet.

It is also possible to create useful reports with the Clipboard. This concerns all report formats except Report 3 and Report 6, which are used to create tailored timetables. Components window and Courses window contain several alternatives in selection Edit|Copy onto the Clipboard. After copying, invoke the spreadsheet application and select Edit|Paste or click [Ctrl+L] in Mimosa.

The Report window consists of five tabs:

• Report
• Selections
• Print
• Timetables
• Other

Select first the appropriate report from the Report page. In the Selections page you can then decide the codes and weeks you want to print and the printing device (Printer or HTML), and in the Timetables and Other reports page you can further define how you want to see your reports printed.

The reports are sent to print (to printer or as web pages) by clicking the Print or HTML button in the Settings tab, respectively.

All report settings (excluding the selected codes and weeks) are stored in the file settings.ini located in Mimosa folder and they are restored when you next time come back to this selection or invoke Mimosa again. Note that in selection File|Profile you can store and restore your settings, if you like to prefer using alternative printing formats.

Report

Select the appropriate report form from the list below and then click the Confirm report selection button. The selection tab becomes active and you can select which codes are going to be printed.

1. List of courses

This report produces a list of selected courses and their weekly lectures.

2. List of components

This report produces a list of selected components and their weekly lectures.

3. Timetables

This is the most widely used report, which creates configurable timetables for selected components.

4. Courses by components

This report produces a list of courses with their components. (1) Basic form prints the classical report, whereas the selection (2) Course timetables prints the timetables of courses from selected weeks horizontally. Click the report type to go to the next selections.

5. Components by courses

This selection creates a list of courses with their components linked with them.

6. Timeline report

This is an all-in-one timetable report. (1) Basic form prints the timetables in matrix form with columns as time-periods, whereas the selection (2) With room information lists courses by components plus the rooms that have been associated with the lectures. (3) All courses in single table shows all course timetables simultaneously in one timetable. Click the report type to go to next selections.

Selections

Select codes

Select the courses or components from here that you want to include in your report. You can select individual codes, select one or all categories or combine both these selections. Note that when publishing timetables on web, some schools do not like to include all component categories, such as teachers. 

See Code selection.

Print to printer...  

Click Print to printer...  if you want to print your report to printer. You can then start printing by clicking the button Print on bottom of the page.

Create HTML reports

Click Create HTML reports, if you would prefer to print it as an HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) file. If you have selected Create HTML reports, you can then adjust the page layout of the report in the HTML-settings panel. You can then start printing by clicking the button HTML on bottom of the page. 

When starting to create HTML reports, you normally input only the starting page, and the application will then create needed pages where user can then find through the starting page. It is a good practice first store the page in your own computer, check the results and then upload them on internet or intranet. 

Why also HTML?

• you can easily inform all people about your school where ever they are
• HTML is a widespread format and the reports can be edited with several applications
• you can save nature and paper and share the printing task with others
• it is easy to send an HTML Report by e-mail, and view it with an HTML browser
• you can preview the printer report by using the corresponding HTML report in your browser

Include weeks

Select the first and last week that you want to include in your report. If you have created timetables for one week only, this selection is disabled.

HTML-settings

In field Your tag you can input your own HTML tag on the top right corner of each page. This tag can be any text displayed there or an HTML command, such as the link to your school’s homepage (or URL). If your school’s name is My School and its homepage is http://www.myschool.com, write the text

<a href="http://www.myschool.com">My School</a>

to create a link to your school’s homepage. Remember to enclose the URL within two double-quotes.

Cellspacing, Cellpadding, Border and Width (%) are keywords used in the HTML, for changing the basic appearance of the tables (in tag <table cellspacing=“x” cellpadding=“y” border=“z” width=“p%”>). Cell font and size definition defines the appearance of each individual cell in tables and it can be used for scaling purposes.

The larger the values of the parameters in Cellspacing, Cellpadding and Border, the bigger and wider are the tables. If the parameter Width (%) has the value 0, the width of the tables is determined automatically by the browser according to their content. If the value is set to 100, the table will be fitted (horizontally) to the screen, the column widths become more balanced and timetables are more legible.

[x] Show title lines and [x] Use colours enable or disable the use of page titles and whether or not to display colours in the tables, which you can define in the Colour palette below. There are eight colours altogether that can be used to distinguish free cells, cells having titles, bookings or lectures. If you check [x] Restore factory settings, the default HTML-colours are reread.

Note that leaving the field Cell font and size definition blank and by leaving [x] Use colours unchecked reduces the size of the HTML-files, since the respective formatting keywords are inserted after each <td> keyword between the commands <table> and </table>.

Special HTML-file names for all reports:

To be enabled, the following special files must exist in the same folder or folder where the HTML files reside. Remember to upload them to the server with the HTML files and consult your local web priest for details when necessary.

The content of the text file style.txt is automatically inserted in the <head>...</head> block of all reports, and there you can include links to Cascading Style Sheets (.css files), Javascripts files (.js files) or any other HTML effects that you want to use to improve the appearance of the reports.

If None is selected as the File extension in links, the HTML version of the report is printed in a one (and often large) text file with the file name defined below in the Main HTML-file. If None is NOT selected, the Main HTML-file is then assumed to be the index file for all the codes and they refer to a set of HTML-files having as their reference tags the selected File extension (such as .htm or .html), whereas in the referenced HTML-files the same file extension is used as in the Main HTML-file.

The file names of the referenced HTML-files begin by default with the character x, if you have not supplied another leading character in First character in file names. The first charcter in file names helps in grouping files and to enable deleting files that are obsolete or created for temporary testing purposes only. (You could dedicate the files with their first character is z to be used only for testing purposes, for instance).

The second character is the report number and the next three characters denote the current week number. The following characters come directly from the current code, after replacing some special and national characters by underscore (_) and changing them to lowercase. This ensures that all reports create unique file names, if they are all stored in the same folder.

The file extension (.htm or .html) in all referenced HTML-files is the same as in the Main HTML-file, the recommended default extension is .htm

These instructions can be used in those cases, where you are obliged to change the file extensions after uploading the files on server.

If you select .html for the file extension, and you print the timetables of three teachers using the main HTML-file mfw.htm, you will obtain the following system of four files in the same folder determined by the main HTML-file:

A fragment of the main HTML-file mfw.htm, where .html is selected for the file extension:

<html><head><title>TIMETABLES</title></head>
<body text=#000000 link=#ff0000 vlink=#8000ff alink=#800040>
...
...
...
<caption>T:Teachers</caption>
<tr>
<td><a href="x3001allen.html">Allen, W.</a>
<td><a href="x3001beatty.html">Beatty, W.</a>
<td><a href="x3001brando.html">Brando, M.</a>
...
...
...
</html>

List of referenced HTML-files, containing information of one timetable in each file:

x3001allen.htm
x3001beatty.htm
x3001brando.htm

The main HTML-file has references to files, which have the extension .html but the actual files have the extension .htm as in the main HTML-file. The reason behind the use of different file extensions in the reference tags in the actual file names is made here simply because the files may later be transferred to a remote computer and/or operating system, which supports ony a limited file naming convention (.htm instead of .html) . During or after file transfer the file names are often automatically renamed to correspond to the convention of the destination environment.

In the above example, the referenced files match exactly the reference tags if they are renamed as follows:

x3001allen.htm => x3001allen.html
x3001beatty.htm => x3001beatty.html
x3001brando.htm => x3001brando.html

Some systems are more sensitive to file name differences than others, but this feature often guarantees that the user does not have to change the reference tags manually.

The File extension in links option enables the file reference system instead of printing all reports in a single file to avoid slow loading it to the browser.

The option to create individual HTML-files for each code is available for Reports 3, 4 and 5, and that for each week is available for Reports 3 and 6.

When you print timetables using Report 3 and you print only one week (5), the resulting file (myfile.htm) contains a table of links to each timetable file (x3005allen.htm, x3005beatty.htm and x3005brando.htm), which are automatically generated by the application:

myfile.htm:
...
...
...
<caption>Teachers</caption>
<tr>
<td><a href="x3005allen.htm">Allen, W.</a>
<td><a href="x3005beatty.htm">Beatty, W.</a>
<td><a href="x3005brando.htm">Brando, M.</a>
...
...
...

If your file has more than one week and you select to print several weeks (say 3...7) instead of one week, Mimosa creates the file of weeks for the main file, and automatically creates index files

week003.htm
week004.htm
week005.htm
week006.htm
week007.htm

which each refer to the list of timetables of the week in question.

If you have created the index file (myfile.htm) as above for all weeks and you have possible edited it, you can easily upgrade this set of file by using another main file name (myfile2.htm) - which you do not use when you upload the timetables, but which was just used to recreate the index files for each week (week00x.htm). All other file names remain the same as before, and you can overwrite them without causing dead links.

The same naming convention applies to Report 6, but instead of week, the prefix tt1, tt2 and tt3 is used - depending on the report variation (1,2,3) that has been. For example, when you later on print the table of Report 6 (3) only from week 4, use file name tt3004.htm to fit in the previously generated file system as in Report 3.

Navigation: On each of the individual timetable pages there are three arrows near the top left corner: [<] [^] [>]. The [<] arrow takes you to the previous week and the [>] arrow takes you to the next week. The up arrow [^] takes you to the timetable's home page (the column of weeks).

If you do NOT want to create the weekly index file on top, but rather print all reports in a single file, select None for File extension in links.

Print

Select here the general printing settings and start printing to printer or create HTML-files of your reports.

You can choose if you like, to include the time stamp ([x] Show time) and a comment (Comment) in the headings. If the default header takes up too much space, leave the selection [x] Three-line headers unchecked. You can also change the content of the [x] Comment line here.

If you have stored your school’s logo (or some other .bmp image file) with the name logo.bmp in your Mimosa folder, it can be previewed on this screen and printed on top of each page, provided that you have NOT checked the selection [X] Three-line headers.

The width of the rectangular area for the image will occupy the page width, but you can adjust its height (0-30 lines) in Height of logo.bmp (in units of lines). The image is automatically stretched to fit the reserved area on top of each page.

In the simplified timetable example below, the greyed area on top of the page is obtained from the file logo.bmp.

When printing a week range on top of the timetable reports, you have the following options in Week format:

If you select Date range or Both, Mimosa prompts you to change the current date format, if the current format is not appropriate. Use symbols d, m, and y for days, months and years, as m/d/yyyy, d.m.yy or ddddd (=default short date format by Windows).

Remember to use valid dates (by selecting the first date of the first week in Options|Time), if the last two selections are applied.

You can also select how to display the code information Code format:

Use Select Printer Font for reports that are printed to printer and Select HTML Font Face for printing to HTML-files. The selected font is used in the text on that button. If the option [x] Apply HTML Font Face is checked, the selected font will be used as the default font type in HTML-reports, and otherwise the default font of the browser is used.

Start printing of your report by pressing the Print or HTML button.

Timetables

The selections in this panel configure the appearance of the printed timetables. Each timetable is a matrix having as its top and left titles the days of week and time-periods, and each timetable is printed on a new page.

You can modify the appearance of the cell contents of the timetables in many ways. From the Timetable cell preview you can see how the individual cells in the final timetable will look like:

Each cell of the timetable can have up to 200 rows to describe the content of the course (course line plus its collection or component lines) that is assigned to that slot. If the course constitutes a sequence over two or more time-periods, all the available rows are efficiently used to display information about the current course. If no courses are allotted, the cell is left blank, and if it is set booked, the selected booking text is centred in the cell.

The first line in each cell is reserved for the course code and/or name and the following for the collection of components of that course:

<CourseLine>
<ComponentLine1>
<ComponentLine2>
<ComponentLine3>
...
<ComponentLineN>

The <CourseLine> is always printed in Bold, whereas the component lines are printed as Normal. In the Course row panel you can change its appearance:

The same rule applies to the Component rows panel as well:

If you select None in both selections, the course cells will always be left blank.

From the selection Categories included you can click all those categories of the components you want to show in the cell. If the collections of the courses are long, you can leave out those which are not relevant or where there are other reasons not to print them.

You can insert comments in timetable cells in two ways:

a) You can add free comments to any cells in Timetables window, by pressing [Ctrl+E] or selecting Edit|Comment this cell. The comments can be added to empty cells or to cells with bookings.

b) You can also define special kind of components that contain additional text information about the current course and add them to the course collection. They work in a very similar fashion as the comments above, but they are connected with the Mimosa data file and their locations move along with the timetable changes.

Preferably use components from the category Subjects or any other category that you have NOT checked the property Prevent conflicts for in Options|Timetables. This text - which is written in the name field of that component - may include information about tests, equipment or books or something similar for the readers of the timetable.

If you do not want to display the same information in each cell of that course, you can use the directive [wwwdtt] in the code or name field of the component to display it only in week www, day d and time-period tt. If you create a new component with code [002304] and name Preliminary test - be warned and add it to some course, it is displayed only in the 4th cell of Wednesday of the 2nd week’s timetable. If you use the number 0 instead of the week, day or time-period, it is used as a wildcard: [001400] in the code or name of the component forces it to be displayed in all cells of Thursday of the 1st week.

In Cell rows range you can set the minimum (1-129) and maximum (1-129) number of rows in the cells of the timetable matrix. When printing, the number of rows is sometimes lowered in order to force the timetable to fit into the page.

Set the minimum number of rows (Min cell rows:) high, if you want to print timetables with (about) similar cell heights and if you want to ensure that all components of the courses are shown, set the maximum number (Max cell rows:) high. Try out different combinations with your favourite fonts and page layout (portrait or landscape) to find the optimal results. You can set both numbers to their maximum values (200) to produce cells of equal height and fill the page with the timetable.

Display in timetables

If you want to print the number of unassigned lectures at the bottom of each timetable page, select

[x] Unassigned lectures.

Selecting

[x] Description as footer

adds the file description text in Options|Description|File description or reminder to the bottom of each page in Report 3.

The option

[x] Empty tables

shows those tables which have neither courses nor bookings.

[x] Numbered lessons

This option adds running numbers ([#a - #b] for sequences and [#a] for single lessons) to the bottom of each cell, indexing all lessons of all courses in their order of appearance, from the first lesson [#1] and first week on, taking also into account the different weights of weeks.

[x] Manually selected rooms

Check this option if you have changed the rooms of course lectures individually and you want to display the room selections in timetables accordingly (default). Go to selection Tools|Select rooms manually or select the room in Timetables window with Edit|Select room manually [Ctrl+R] to update the connections of courses, time-slots and rooms. Note that you can select the rooms manually only for those courses which contain no components in the category of classrooms. When you have problems in assigning all lectures of some course in the predefined room, delete the room component from the collection of that course and then select the rooms manually.

[x] Dates in timetables

This selection adds the dates to the timetables below days of week and also displays them in Timetables window. This option is valid only if you have selected to synchronize weeks with calendar.

[x] Cell comments

If you like to print also the comments that you have attached to cells in Timetables window (Edit|Comment this cell [Ctrl+E]), check this option.

Other options

[x] Hide matching component

does not display that component in the timetable cells which is identical with the heading current timetable, since this information is often redundant for the reader. With this option you can reduce the needed cell rows.

[x] Add dates to timetables

option if you want to supply timetables with dates. This option is available only if you have selected to Replace weeks by dates in Options|Time and the dates are shown with the days of the weeks only in those weeks which can be meaningfully interpreted as normal calendar weeks (having lengths equal to one).

This option does not distinguish the differences of manually selected rooms, if you have used then.

[x] Center cell rows vertically

When selected, the cell rows are adjusted in the middle of the cell, otherwise starting from the top of the cell.

[x] Suppress last empty cells

You can check this option, if you do not want to print the last blank cells. If you have defined 12 time-periods per day, but on average only the first 8 of them is in use, you can avoid printing them and save this space for active cells.

If you want to wrap the course names, components and comments to several lines, select

[x] Wrap lines

In some schools, this option is the only way to fit all components in timetable cells also when printing on a printer. (When you are about to print personalised timetables that show each student of each course, you should also select to print the codes of the students instead of their names to be able to fit them all in the printed area).

[x] Equally spaced cells (HTML)

This option is available only for HTML output. It instructs the browser to create equally spaced cells for each day, independent of the text lengths in each cell. Half of the normal cell width is provided for the first columns containing time-periods. This is the default setting when printing on paper.

[x] Create course references (HTML)

This option is available only for HTML output. When selected, it creates for Reports 3 and 6 course references instead of course codes and/or names. All course references are linked to course pages having a course-based name, course AUT105 refers to “aut105.htm”. At the end of creating the timetable pages, you are prompted to create these pages of all courses by Mimosa, but you can also refer to the existing course pages, if their names comply with those used by Mimosa.

With this option you can create more compact timetables and hide component names, since clicking the course links always displays all additional information about the course (list of components and schedule).

[x] Lower case file names (HTML)

This option automatically changes all file references to lower case. This selection is useful after uploading the web pages, since during this process file name cases may change but references within files are not changes accordingly, causing dead links between web pages.

Other

The various settings that are meaningful to use depend on the report selected. The best way to study them is to try out some of the combinations of the settings with a small sample of codes. They are grouped according to the selected report number as follows:

Reports 1,2,4,5

With the selections

[x] NAME

[x] CATEGORY

[x] MAX

[x] SUM

[x] DONE

[x] LINKS

you can choose which titles from the courses or components you want to include in the report (the running number and the code are always selected by default, to enable identification of the data in all circumstances). Leaving some of the titles out gives you some extra space for the weekly lectures and can make the appearance of the reports more compact.

If you want to print the lectures for weeks calculated cumulatively or multiplied by the week weights, click the appropriate check boxes

[x] Cumulative

[x] Multiplied

(the second option has no effect, if all weeks have the weight of one). Sometimes it is more interesting to see the final results, lectures in timetables instead of lectures allocated to weeks. In that case, select the option

[x] Timetabled

Instead of calculating the values of SUM and DONE from all weeks (default), you can limit the calculation only to the week range that you selected in tab Selections.

[x] SUM and DONE from selected weeks only

If you like to exclude those courses or components from the list, which do not have any lectures allocated to weeks that you have selected, you can check

[x] Select allocated codes only (SUM>0)

Reports 4,5

If you have selected

[x] Averages

the number # of all weeks (=divider) is used as a divider in printing the supplementary average lectures of MAX, SUM and DONE. Normally the divider is the total number of week weights in the total planning period. If you want to add detailed information about the allocation of the lectures over weeks for each course or component, select

[x] Week grid

You can also add more information to each page by selecting

[x] Linked codes (only collections) or

[x] Linked rows (detailed),

but preferably not both at the same time (since it increases paper consumption).

Reports 1,2

[x] Repeat titles for each page

prints the titles you have selected on each page - instead of only on the first page.