Calendar mode — advanced options

Creating a calendar timetable is included in the Premium plan, along with availability in calendar mode and multiple timetables published in parallel: on a Premium account, these functions are available without any specific activation.

What calendar mode specifically enables

• create a timetable whose lessons are individually dated;
• define a start and end date range;
• use date constraints when they are configured;
• generate only a target window shorter than the timetable's total range;
• ask the solver to compact lessons at the start of the period, at the end of the period, or with no position preference;
• display, publish and view lessons like other timetables but over a date interval;
• declare that some classes have lessons repeating on a weekly pattern, and exempt the courses that do not follow one;
• use off-grid mode on calendar classes, with explicit start and end times on each lesson.

Complementary functions

Other functions, described on their dedicated pages, naturally complement a calendar timetable:

• Multiple timetables published in parallel to publish several timetables over the same period;
• Availability in calendar mode to collect dated availability;
• Groups of groups to work with transverse groups.

When to prefer calendar over weekly

• Non-recurring programmes: intensive modules, seminars, conferences on varying dates.
• Continuing education: sessions that do not run on a regular academic year.
• External teachers: each one has their own calendar, not fixed weekly service hours.
• End-of-programme courses: projects, thesis defences, juries.

See Calendar mode for typical higher-education cases.

Recurring lessons

A calendar timetable does not rule out regularity: on it, a class offers one extra option, Recurring lessons. The class's lessons then repeat on a weekly pattern instead of being positioned one by one. You tick the option when creating the class, or later when editing it, and it exists only on a calendar timetable.

A course of that class can opt out through Outside recurrence: exams, thesis defences and visiting instructors have no pattern to follow; their lessons are still placed date by date.

This option shapes automatic generation, which then looks for a typical week and rolls it out over the class's date range.

It also adds the Recurrence setting to the allocation policy. You can then state the rhythm you want for positioning a recurring course, or let the algorithm work it out on its own. A course can just as well be declared non-recurring. When the algorithm cannot fully satisfy the recurrence, it looks for the closest solution for the remaining lessons: the same day of the recurrence but a different time, or a day further and further away in the same week, or somewhere else entirely.