Step 6 — Distribute the hours and create the lessons

You have already declared the hourly volumes per subject for each class (step 4). This is where you break those volumes down into individual lessons.

The screen is organized in two parts:

• On the left: the list of classes and their courses (the class's subjects, possibly broken down by type), with a dynamic counter of hours already created per course.
• On the right: the lessons created for the selected class.

Three display modes

The right-hand panel works in three modes, switched with the selector at the top left of that panel. Each has its purpose, and you move from one to another without losing your work in progress.

Sticky notes (default)

Lessons appear as cards sorted by subject or by date (for calendar-type timetables). This is the mode detailed throughout the rest of this page: double-click to create, drag the border for the duration, card icons for the attributes.

• Strengths: very visual; ideal for creating lessons, breaking down the volumes, adjusting durations by dragging and handling complex lessons (alternate, concatenated…) directly on the card.
• Drawbacks: not very practical for acting on many lessons at once, for getting a finely filtered overall view, or for seeing placements and placing lessons quickly.

Timetables (reorganization)

Lessons are displayed in a layout close to the timetable, ready to be reorganized in bulk.

• Selection: a click selects a lesson and opens an interactive form.

• Multi-selection: Shift+click extends the selection to a range. The selected lessons are then edited together on a shared form (bulk duration, shared attributes…).

• Dynamic filters and the choice of days to display narrow the view down to what you are working on.

• "Awaiting" filters: isolate the lessons awaiting classroom or awaiting teacher to finish the missing assignments; warning badges point out what remains to be completed.

• A days / entities toggle flips the axis of the schedule depending on what you are comparing.

• Strengths: very efficient manual placement, combined views (class + teacher, for example), reorganizing many lessons, targeted filtering to deal with the gaps, fast bulk editing directly on a calendar.

• Drawbacks: less direct than sticky notes for initial creation, no creation of complex lessons, less fine-grained filtering for viewing and bulk editing.

Listing

A table view of the lessons: one row per lesson, one column per piece of information (status, class, subject, duration, position, alternate week, teacher, group, room, headcount, resource, memo).

• Sorting: every column can be sorted — click its header to sort on it, click again to reverse the order (ascending / descending).

• Per-column filtering: under each header, a multi-choice drop-down menu filters the column (sometimes two menus for a compound column such as day + time; a range field >=10, <5, 10-20 for the headcount). Several values in the same menu combine as OR, unless they are values of different kinds (for example, on rooms: between the tags, videoconferencing, size and name), in which case it is an AND; filters set on several columns stack as AND. A button resets all the filters.

• Pagination: for large volumes, the list is paginated; the page size adjusts automatically (from a few hundred to a few thousand rows) to stay responsive.

• Simplified mass editing: tick the lessons you want (selection column), then use the column's header action button (duration, teacher, group, room…) to apply it in one go to the whole selection.

• Automatic room allocation: choose a set of lessons and a set of rooms; the algorithm proposes an optimal assignment (headcounts, room constraints, availability), which you adjust row by row before confirming. See Automatic classroom assignment.

• Strengths: sortable overview, fine-grained per-column filtering, mass editing and room assignment.

• Drawbacks: less visual time context than the other two modes, no creation of complex lessons.

Create a lesson

A lesson is an individual occurrence of a course (its subject, a duration, sometimes a group, usually a teacher and a room), later placed on the timetable.

Select a class, then double-click a course: a lesson of that subject is created with the default values (duration = the class's time unit, the course's teacher(s), the default room if any). It starts out without a position and joins the lessons not yet placed, ready to be positioned by the algorithm or by hand.

Double-clicking works in all three modes; the list of courses is simply in a different place: in the center in sticky notes mode, under each class in the left-hand panel in timetables and listing modes.

To then fine-tune the lesson (duration, group, teacher, room, resource), the interface depends on how it is displayed:

• While it is a card — in sticky notes mode, or not yet placed in the timetables view — drag the bottom border for the duration and click the card's icons for the attributes.
• Once placed on the calendar, or in listing mode, settings go through a drop-down menu: the Edit lesson form (click the lesson on the calendar), or the listing's row and column menus — the latter also allowing mass editing.

Break down an hourly volume

Example: the 4 weekly hours of a mathematics course can become:

• 4 lessons of 1 h, or
• 2 lessons of 2 h, or
• 1 lesson of 2 h + 2 lessons of 1 h.

The choice is yours, depending on your teaching rhythm. The course counter tracks your progress continuously (see below).

Automatic allocation

The Actions menu offers an Automatic allocation that fills each course's missing volume in one go: it adds lessons of the chosen duration (1 or 2 grid slots, 3 and 4 on calendar timetables — the value in hours therefore depends on the timetable's slot duration) and ends with a shorter lesson if the remainder is not whole. It respects the lessons already created, sets the default teachers and room, and leaves everything unplaced.

It only acts on the visible courses: combine it with the filter (Filter) by subject or by type to allocate, for example, only the "Theory courses". In listing mode, it processes all classes at once; elsewhere, the selected class.

The per-course hours counter

Each course, on the left, carries a counter that sets the hours created against the target volume declared at step 4 (for example 3 h / 4 h). It is the look of the card that signals your progress:

• Below the volume: normal look — there are still hours to create.
• Exactly at the volume: the card fades out (reduced opacity), a sign that it is complete.
• Above the volume: red border — you have created too many hours.

The counter's badge, for its part, simply takes the subject's color (it can therefore be green, blue… with no link to progress); on hover, the card is underlined with the interface's accent color. Hovering also shows a tooltip detailing the breakdown of the lessons created (durations, types, alternate weeks, drafts / canceled).

Subgroups and the balance indicator

When a course is split into a division (several subgroups having their lessons at the same time, typically a half-class split), the counter does not multiply by the number of groups: a division counts once — otherwise the total would show n × volume, which would make no sense.

What remains is to check that all the subgroups receive the same volume: that is the role of the icon that then appears to the right of the course.

• Green balance — Groups in class division in balance: all the subgroups have the same number of hours.
• Orange balance — Groups in class division out of balance: one subgroup has more or fewer hours than the others.

Hovering over the icon lists the detail per group (hours of each subgroup), to immediately spot the one that needs catching up.

Duplicate a lesson

Two levels of duplication coexist.

Quick clone. The Duplicate icon — present on the sticky-note card as well as on every listing row — creates one copy of the lesson in the temporary zone (unplaced), attributes included. Ideal for stringing together identical lessons.

Advanced duplication. In the lesson's form (the Edit lesson popup), the chevroned copy button opens a much richer menu, used mostly in the timetables / calendar view. You first choose how many copies (1 to 999) — or, on a calendar-type timetable, up to a date — then how to place them:

• Add lesson to the temporary zone — copies left unplaced.
• Same time slot — repeats the lesson on the same slot.
• Next free slot(s) — automatically looks for the slots compatible with the duration.
• Next day(s) / previous day(s) — shifts to neighboring days.
• Next week(s) / previous week(s) — (calendar only) carries over from one week to the next.
• Choose the slots — you point to the free slots yourself on the schedule.

On the per-day and per-week options, a "Free" button restricts the search to unoccupied slots only. On calendar timetables, this search can even extend beyond the current timetable when a cross-timetable comparison is active.

Memos

You can attach a memo (free-form comment) to a lesson via the Comment icon. Several memos are possible, with different visibility levels:

• administrators only,
• administrators + teachers,
• everyone (visible to students and on the display panel).

Memos appear in the tooltips when hovering over lessons on the timetables.

Complex lessons

For sophisticated configurations, see the dedicated page: Complex lessons. In short:

• Alternate (week A/B) — Add week at the top right of the lesson, adds an alternate week.
• Concatenated (consecutive) — drag and drop one lesson under another.
• Associated (alternating half-groups) — a button that appears between two concatenated lessons.
• Co-taught (several teachers on the same lesson) — multi-teacher selection on Assign teachers.

Mass actions

The Actions menu at the top right gives access to the mass operations:

• Cancel the placement of all lessons (except locked ones),
• Remove the locks on placements,
• Clear the room assignments,
• Assign the preconfigured rooms (the class's or the teacher's default room, excluding special rooms),
• Automatic allocation of lessons over 1 or 2 periods,
• Spreadsheet import / export (see Mass import),
• Delete all lessons of a class ⚠.

Dynamic error detection

On every change, Omniscol checks consistency and displays the alerts at the top of the screen and on the affected classes / lessons. See Diagnostic.

Save

⚠ Deleting a lesson is immediate and permanent (unless you have not saved yet). Save regularly with Save.

There is no global Undo / Redo function on this screen. Before saving, review the deletions and the mass actions.

What comes next

Next step: Automatic generation.