Support of timetable transfers

Administration
1

Hi Ross,

I came across FET at http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/ a few months ago. This is a rather impressive free timetabling software, which allows to calculate timetables based on specific conditions. It also supports the creation of xml export files, which could be used to import the results of FET with a few clicks into Gibbon.

Are there plans to support transfer files to ease and maybe even replace the current rather tedious process of creating timetables in Gibbon?

Kind regards,
Roman

2

Roman,

Timetable imports are available in Gibbon, although they rely on CSV, rather than XML. Please take a look at Admin > Timetable Admin, and then look for the import button in the row for the timetable you wish to input.

Right now we do not have the resources to add support for FET, although it would certainly be an interesting project to support.

Ross

3

Hi Ross,

Ok, I wasn’t aware of this!

I got in touch with the developers of FET. Liviu Lalescu suggested to come up with a custom csv version to support Gibbon. These guys are really cool!

What do you think?

Kind regards,
Roman

4

Roman,

That sounds amazing. Hopefully they can do that. Or a generic CSV, which you can convert to Gibbon format. They might be more likely to implement a more general solution. Thanks for contacting them : )

Ross

5

Yea… I am using FET as well, impressive indeed. so it’s 2018 now, any further update regarding transferring file from FET to replace the tedious timetabling process in Gibbon? thanks.

6

Hi Tklee,

It’s surprisingly easy because FET supports CSV import/export. FET creates a file called timetable.csv. This file contains basically all you need. However, the format is not identical to the Gibbon timetable import file. The FET file uses times, e.g. 08:45, unlike the Gibbon file which uses period names. You also need to add the rooms and other things manually. Search & replace and filters in Libreoffice or Excel help a lot.

Take your time doing the changes. Don’t rush because you can mess up things quite easily. Ensure to make a backup before you import the new file and don’t forget to verify the results. The fact that everything is green-lighted doesn’t mean it’s right!

Kind regards,
Roman

7

Hi Roman,
Yea… I did give it a try and follow the instructions on Gibbon to amend the csv file and it works!! When this two systems work together i think basically it covers everything we need for a school management system.
Cheers.

8

This sounds interesting, I’ll have to check it out too :smiley: Thanks for sharing your workflow!