Greetings, Ross (and the rest of the Gibbon team)!
I am trying to set up a schedule for my summer camp that includes a couple times slots that rotate each day. Most of the classes are the same throughout the duration of the camp, but these two time slots are meant to rotate.
Last year I went through the painstaking process of creating a separate timetable for each day of camp and connecting the different timetables to the different days. I really don’t want to do that, though–it is a lot of front end work, and it makes student schedule exports a mess. Right now I’m trying to connect two timetables to the same day of camp (one rotation timetable with just the two changing sections, and one that applies to every day). In practice, though, the days that have both timetables display neither on the home screen timetable display.
Any thoughts or advice would be most appreciated!
Kevin
It sounds like you could do this with one timetable, and just have two separate days (Day A and Day B) and then schedule these in rotating fashion. If you want rotation within the day (e.g. multiple groups rotating through activities) then represent each group as a class within a course (e.g. Kayaking might be the course, split into classes A and B) and then schedule these classes to rotate through different slots in the day.
Hope this helps, but if not, come back with feedback and we’ll see what we can do.
My apologies, Ross; I didn’t use the correct terminology here. I did what you have described here last summer–one timetable with separate days. The problem is that we run a six day camp with a six day rotation. I was trying to avoid creating the entire schedule six times just for two classes a day that need to change.
What I tried today that wasn’t working was creating one timetable day that applies to all six days of camp (all non rotation classes, which is the bulk of the schedule). I then created a separate timetable day that only has the rotation classes–this is much faster to build (only two time slots to manage) and allows me to double book rooms when I need to rotate staff while keeping students in place.
Once I tied two timetable days to the same school day, though, they cancelled each other out on the home screen timetable display. Since I am able to tie two timetable days to the same school day, I was partly trying to figure out if I was missing something here. Why do they seem to cancel each other, and is there a way around that?
I’m also (as I mentioned) trying to avoid building the daily schedule six times. It takes so much time, it’s harder to manage for students, and SQL exports are messier.
I can share screen shots or other details if that helps explain any of this. Thanks again, Ross!
Hi Kevin, I see. You can only have one timetable day from each timetable on any given day. You might be tempted to split it over two timetables, but I think this won’t give you the result you want, as users will have to select between the TT they want in order to see it.
It sounds like you are on the right lines, I just wonder why you need to put two days on the same date. Can’t you do it so that your special day includes the information from the regular day, and then use them one at a time? This saves repeated day definitions.
I think I have things moving in the right direction now.
In my timetable column I have a row called Class 1 that runs 1:00-1:30–this is for classes that meet daily. I then created another row called Rotation 1 that also runs 1:00-1:30 (with the plan to create 5 more). I can see several options for the next series of steps, but I’m not sure which are best suited to my goals.
Should I create a single row called Rotation then put all the Rotation classes into this, or should I stick with a separate row for each rotation group? How do I set up each rotation class so it will only run on one day–despite it being attached to a column that is tied to every day of camp? Do I just have to use class names that indicate the day of that rotation class?
Any and all guidance is appreciated as this new approach starts to take shape.
Hi Kevin, having two parallel time slots within one common is pretty unorthodox: normally you would use courses and classes to split the time specified in columns into individual groupings/rotations. Does this help? Ross.
I think I see what you’re saying, Ross. I’m struggling to apply it to my situation, but I’m going to give it a
I also struggle with using query builder to export manageable schedules when using these rotations. Again, though, I’ll mess with it and send specific questions later.
Best of luck! If you have a picture or screenshot, a visual might help explain what you’re looking to accomplish. There’s a fair bit of complexity in the timetabling system, but that tends to mean it can also handle a wide range of use cases.
I did finally get it figured out, Sandra and Ross. I chose to run with a second timetable for staff only (that did take a little back end fussing, but I got it in place). Students will just have a daily schedule which helps them better understand what they are doing anyway. Staff will then have the rotation timetable that details daily differences.
I still had to set up extra days, but they were much simpler than having to do it for all daily classes in addition to the rotation. It also makes for more readable exported schedules (with Query Builder).
Hi Kevin, thanks for sharing the result. Gibbon’s flexibility means that you can often solve such challenges, but it sometimes takes a little sideways thinking! Ross.