Mimosa is not an institution-specific software. Therefore, some special terms are used to describe the concepts used and the course planning and timetabling process in a more general setting. See also section Mimosa Tutorial.
Courses and components
Contrary to institution-specific solutions, the basic concepts in timetabling, such as classes, teachers, rooms, staff and equipment, are not explicitly defined. The common name we use for these basic building blocks is components. The user, with the help of categories, defines the names for different kinds of components, which will be used. Each component must also have a key with a maximum length of 15 characters and a name with a maximum length of 63 characters.
Courses define the teaching requirements for the institution. They can also be categorised like components and supplied with codes and names. In addition, a collection of components is attached to each course, plus the total number of lectures for the planning period, which can be up to 255 weeks (almost 5 years).
Time
The time frame is divided into
Weeks or terms represent the total planning time of the lectures. Each week can in turn be multiplied by a whole number 1-255, according to the length of the planning period within each week (default value =1). Time parameters are set in Options|Limits and Options|Time.
The basic function of the software is to create and print working timetables for classes, students, teachers and rooms (or any other resources that apply).
To create timetables, one must know exactly the number of lectures of each subject plus the name of the teacher, the class and the room related to the course. To construct courses, one must first input all classes, teachers and rooms which must be combined suitable to reflect the teaching requirements. Depending on your institution’s requirements you may only need some of these items/components. It is up to your specific needs which components are used for timetables.
0. Creating or importing data
Using Mimosa can typically be divided into the following sections, if you are now creating a new file. If the file can be imported from other sources or pasted from the Clipboard, a lot of unnecessary retyping can be eliminated. Normally, there are several alternative methods to get data from other windows applications with the help of the Clipboard selections built into this application.
It might be helpful to open a sample file to get a picture of how the data will look after some hundreds of components and courses have been created and processed in order to finally get a realistic teaching plan over many weeks and thousands of possible timetables are constructed.
Note that you can keep all four main windows open at once (or preferably maximise the current one), and activate the other windows in any order you want, according to your needs. But as a rule of thumb, we could say that without components there are no courses, and only after the lectures of the courses have been allocated over weeks can they be timetabled. The only exception is an entire term that is only one week in duration. In this case the allocation step is not necessary.
1. Define options
Select File|New from the File menu to create a new file and then set the parameters in the Options menu. Set the time frame in Limits, other time parameters in Time tab and in Categories, define categories for components and courses. You can save the settings on disk as defaults, but they are also stored along with the current data file.
2. Create components
Activate the Components window, and begin to insert new components (such as classes, students, teachers, rooms, subjects and so on). Use the commands in Edit selection or the corresponding buttons to insert, edit or delete components. Select the appropriate category and try to systematically select the codes and names. To avoid confusion do not use codes having spaces or consisting only of numbers (0...9). Remember that you can always use codes, names or categories as sorting criteria. See components.
3. Create courses
Having created all or at least some of the components, you will activate the window Courses, and begin to create courses in the same way that you created components. To the data stored in components, you must also add for each course the total amount of lectures (MAX) that should be given in the planning period plus the list of the components making up the course. A maximum of 128 components can be added to each course. Maintaining the list of components is accomplished with the Insert and Remove buttons. (Conversely, you can also modify the course lists for each component from the components window.)
As with components, use the codes and names systematically; courses can also be sorted according to the same criteria as components. See List of Courses.
4. Allocate lectures to weeks
When at least one of the courses is created, you can then activate the window Weeks and start to allocate the lectures over weeks. This can be accomplished manually, with the Insert button or any other command in the Edit menu.
Roughly speaking, the goal is often to allocate the lectures as smoothly as possible (with respect to students and teachers) and to maintain a meaningful pedagogic order among them. The View menu contains several tools to help you control this process; try to activate the component level window by either double-clicking the grid, selecting View|Sum window or pressing the corresponding “calculator” button.
5. Create timetables
Activate the window Timetables. From the list of weeks, select the week you want to create timetables for or double-click the Master Timetable in the top left corner to import the active week for processing.
Select the Insert mode or Erase mode, depending on whether you wish to insert or remove the elements. Highlight the area in the Master Timetable and click the appropriate action button again or double-click the cell you want to change. With the Search Button you can find the next timetable with elements not yet timetabled. Select the current course from the list below the Master Timetable.
When dealing with elements in the Master Timetable, you should normally see connecting timetables on the right, which show how the synchronisation works between the timetables. Double-click any element in the supporting timetable to move this timetable to a position as the active one in the Master Timetable.
6. Reports
Having created the timetables, you can print all the reports of interest or copy data onto the Clipboard for further analysis. All reports can be printed in HTML-format and the data can be shared with other users of the internet or intranet.