Classroom

A classroom in Omniscol is a physical room in which a lesson can take place. Each classroom belongs to a site. A classroom carries:

• a name ("A102", "Amphi Newton", "Lab. Chimie 3"),
• a capacity (number of students the room can hold; a critical field for the solver),
• optionally a Maximum number of classes setting when it is a large room able to host several lessons at the same time (exam room, theater, gym, swimming pool, outdoor area),
• optionally a specialisation (chemistry, computing, sport, multimedia, etc. — a single label per room),
• optionally free-form tags or comments (flip chart, fixed projector, power outlets for students, etc.),
• optionally a building,
• opening hours (useful for rooms shared with another school, or for rooms open only on certain days).

Assignment to lessons

A lesson can have one or several rooms. When you assign a room manually, Omniscol:

• pre-filters unsuitable rooms (wrong specialisation, insufficient capacity, unavailability, wrong site) by displaying them semi-transparent,
• sorts compatible rooms by suitability (stars: optimal fill, etc.),
• lets you force an inconsistent assignment, but raises an alert.

Capacity and sizing

Capacity is a critical field. When in doubt, and if you are certain the room will be large enough, enter a high number. If you undersize it, the solver will reject valid configurations or raise alerts.

Large room: several simultaneous lessons

The Maximum number of classes field turns a room into a large room: it can then host several different lessons at the same moment (distinct teachers and groups), within the limit of that number and of its total capacity — typically an exam room, a theater, a gym, a swimming pool or an outdoor area. This setting only appears on a room that has a specialisation. Left empty, the room hosts only one lesson at a time.

Specialisation

The specialisation (chemistry, computing, sport, multimedia, supervised test room…) is a free label, unique per room. It is then used to state, when assigning a subject to a class, that a room carrying exactly this label is required. The engine strictly enforces this constraint.

Room dedicated to a class

Many primary/secondary setups associate a room with each class (lessons take place there by default, and only the teachers move around). You can configure this on the class (see creating classes).

Rooms in two virtual sites

If you have created two virtual sites for a single physical location (typically a middle school and a high school sharing the premises), a room can belong to only one of the two sites at a time. To make it usable on the middle school side and on the high school side, duplicate it in both sites and enter mutually exclusive opening hours. Omniscol does not distinguish a single room shared between two sites from two rooms with the same name: it does not cross-check the two entries automatically, and it is up to you to avoid double-booking the real physical room.