Create and edit components

In this view you can add a new or edit an existing component. When you are in Components view, press the [Insert] or [Enter] key takes you into this window.

Components are the resources you are creating timetables for. In schools and universities components are, in most cases, teachers, rooms and students or sets of students (groups or classes) but may also include equipment such as projectors and other teaching aids. You can define whatever components you like and, with the help of categories, you can give names and shortcuts for each type of component you create.

For each component, you have to enter a

• unique component Code,
• descriptive Name and
• Category, defining the type of the current component.

When creating a new file, you typically start to create components. In educational institutions, components are typically either Classes (=groups, sections), Teachers or Rooms. In institutions having individual timetables, Students are used instead of Classes. All components are shown in the same view, and by default sorted by category so that all components of the first category comes first and so on. There is no need to change the view to go to view/edit teachers or rooms.

After one or more courses have been created you can attach them to components in a similar manner as you can do in Courses view. Note that these both views are very similar in their functionality. Mimosa checks that the permissible links of courses and components are always valid, by showing on the right box only those items that can be added.

Click [Insert] to create a new component. Here you will enter Code, Name and Category for each component. The maximum number of lectures of the component (MAX) is calculated automatically from the courses linked to this component and therefore it cannot be changed from this window.

Click [Enter] to edit any of the existing component. After you have created some courses, they will become visible also this window (on the right-hand box). This enables to edit all course-component connections also from the component point of view, which is often very useful when addressing students to several courses.

To add courses to component, select the available course(s) on the right box and click Add button or double-click the course. In a similar way, you can remove selected courses from the left box or Swap courses across boxes. You can continue this process also after creating timetables, since Mimosa takes care that overlaps cannot occur and lists only those items on the right box which are currently available and will not create conflicts.

If you are about to create individual timetables, it is often more convenient to edit the courses from this view. If the students or other components have alternative choices to switch across courses, use Swap button to make the switches. The changes in this view reflect the changes in courses view, but this enables to edit the collections of two courses with click.

Techniques to select and move items between the boxes:

• If you want to select or deselect a single item from the list, click the left mouse button
• If you want to include several, but not necessarily consecutive items in your selection, keep the Ctrl button down and click the left mouse button
• If you want to include a range of items from the first to the last in your selection, keep the Shift button down when selecting the first and last item from the list
• You can drag-and-drop selected items from one box to another, by keeping the left mouse button down and dragging items from one box to the other box and releasing the mouse on the target box

Description of screen elements:

Code

Enter a new code here for the component you are about to create or edit the old code if it has already been created. When creating a new component, Mimosa fills this field automatically (with "Component123"). Replace it with your own code, which better describes its content. Also take into account that you may want to use this code later on as a sorting criteria. Note that when printing or publishing timetables, you can always select to display the code, name or both.

Name

Add to each component a descriptive component name (with maximum length of 63 characters).

You can enclose in brackets [ ... ], ( ... ), { ... } ,\ ... \ or / ... / those texts you do not want to show in reports and on screen. (See Options|Other|Hidden text separators).

The capacity of the room can be taken into account by using the special character # followed by the number, such as #35, and it can also be enclosed in brackets. In case of other components except rooms, you can define their demands similarly, such as the size of a group. Check the selection Check room capacity in Options|Other to display in Courses view the difference of the room capacity as compared to the capacity demands of the other components of each course.

Category

Because of the different needs of the institutions that use this software, the types of the components are not used explicitly, but they can be defined with the help of categories.

MAX

This is the total number of lectures planned to be allocated over weeks for this component when calculated from all courses that include this component in their collections. This field is automatically updated by the application (via courses) and it cannot be modified here.

SUM

The total number of allocated lectures of this component (SUM<=MAX). The value in this field is automatically updated by the application in the Weeks view and cannot be changed here.

DONE

The total number of scheduled lectures of this course (DONE<=SUM). The value in this field is automatically updated by Mimosa after the lectures have been scheduled, typically in Timetables view.

LINKS

The total number of courses linked with this component. This number is changed when you change the number of the course list on the bottom left of this window.

Buttons on top of this window

The functions presented below can also be accessed from the pop-up menu:

Copies the selected codes from the left list box (linked courses) to the Clipboard. You can copy the selected or all codes to the Clipboard and Paste it to another component.

Pastes the selection from the Clipboard to the left list (linked courses).

Cuts (copies and removes) the selected codes from the left list (linked courses) to the Clipboard.

You can use the above three functions to copy and move course links across two or more components. Once you have select the Copy or Cut operation, you can select another component or create a new component and then select Paste to copy/move the stored course links to this component.

Click it to enable/disable only the currently activated category to be displayed on the right box. This option is often useful to limit your search to a specified set of the code list.

Displays detailed information of the latest selected course or component, its links to other codes and schedule information. See Show info for details.

Displays a window of the conflicting courses for all components with the current component activated. See Tools|Modify collections.

Change the previous component to the active component, without using the [OK] or [Cancel] buttons. If some of the fields have been changed, you are prompted to accept the changes before moving to the previous component.

Change the next component to the active component, without using the [OK] or [Cancel] buttons. If some of the fields have been changed, you are prompted to accept the changes before moving to the next component.

Buttons between boxes

You can change the selected fields that are displayed in the lists on the left and right. If too many fields are displayed, only a part of the course name is shown.

Courses are added to the active component by choosing them from the list of Courses not selected on the right. You can add the courses one by one by clicking them with the mouse or select several courses simultaneously by pressing the Shift or Ctrl keys with the mouse. Press Add to add selected courses.

Courses are removed from the active component by selecting them from the list on the left and then pressing Remove. If you want to remove all courses of this component, press Clear.

You can also simply Swap two selected courses from both lists and combine pressing Add and Remove buttons.'

Select All selects all components from the course.

If you want to remove all courses of this component, press Clear All.

View schedules

When you have scheduled your lectures, you can also view snapshots of them by clicking View schedule button on the bottom of the screen. The view expands and displays the timetable of the component and the active course selected on the left box.

If you have defined several weeks, use the arrow buttons on the bottom of the timetable to view the timetable of the next or previous week. Note that you can only view the timetables here. Click the timetable cell to view a full explanation of its content. Click View schedule again to go back to default view.

Examples of components:

Click [Enter] to edit and [Delete] to delete a component. Input the following classes (C), teachers (T) and rooms (R) and finally sort them (by category and code) by clicking the title row at CODE.

Note that the first column (#) is a running number helping you to keep track of the components and (*) contains the category shortcut. You cannot change the MAX, SUM, DONE or LINKS fields, since they are automatically maintained by the application when courses are created.