Daily timetable tips for coordinators

Work the timetable setup checklist in order, make the weekly grid arithmetic balance, and publish without stranding draft periods.

Teaching & schedule guide for day and boarding schools.

Last updated August 29, 2026

Timetabling fails for boring reasons far more often than for clever ones. Almost every stuck generation comes down to one of three things: the instructional week is not what you think it is, a class has been assigned the wrong number of periods, or teacher assignment rows are duplicated or point at inactive records. The setup checklist exists to name which one it is instead of leaving you to guess.

Work it top down. The instructional week is derived from the weekend configuration on the academic calendar, so a school that teaches Monday to Saturday and never changed the default will silently plan a five-day grid. Periods per day come from the active period definitions. Those two numbers set the target every class must hit.

Order of work

Confirm the active academic year and that its weekend rules produce the right number of instructional days
Define the periods that make up the school day; the count is periods per day for all grid arithmetic
Check classes, subjects, and teacher accounts exist and are active
Set the curriculum plan per grade so the suggested subject load is not the built-in fallback
Record teacher subject capabilities, then class-section teaching assignments for the year
Clear assignment data-quality issues - duplicates, inactive teachers, classes with no assignments
Confirm each class balances to the weekly target, then run feasibility
Generate, resolve remaining conflicts in the editor, and publish with a reason

Checklist states and what they mean

State	Meaning
ok	Nothing to do for this step
warn	Generation can proceed but the result will be poorer, for example a missing curriculum plan
error	Blocking. Generation is refused until it is fixed
pending	Cannot be judged yet because an earlier step is incomplete

Limits

A period carries only a number, start and end time, and duration. There is no break or lunch period type, so a break is either an ordinary period or absent from the grid
Feasibility is about teacher capacity and class grid balance. Room capacity is not part of that check, even though a classroom can be attached to each entry
Publishing is all-or-nothing per run. There is no per-class staged release to families

Common questions

Quick answers in plain language.

Generation refuses to run. Where do I look first?+

The setup checklist on the timetable workspace. It walks fourteen steps from academic year through publish and marks each one ok, warning, error, or pending, with a link to the screen that fixes it. Generation stays blocked while any blocking assignment data-quality issue exists or the feasibility check fails.

What does the grid-balance error actually mean?+

For each class, the total periods per week across its teaching assignments must equal periods per day multiplied by instructional days per week. If a class is short or over that target, generation cannot fill the grid exactly and reports the class as unbalanced.

Teachers say the timetable is empty even though I generated it.+

Generated entries start as DRAFT and are hidden from daily views, dashboards, and learner portals. Publish from the timetable workspace; publishing requires a reason, stores a snapshot, and notifies the teachers and classes affected by the diff.

Why can a teacher not open the Generate or Analytics tabs?+

Those tabs are limited to Platform Admin, Principal, Vice Principal, and Admin. Passing tab in the query string does not bypass it - the server resolves an allowed tab and falls back to the read-only view.