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Step 2 — Sites, time grids, classrooms, resources

The Sites tab is where you model the physical dimension of your institution.

Creating the sites

If all your lessons take place in the same location: one site is enough. Click Create a site and give it a name.

If you have multiple sites: create one site per distinct physical location. Enter the travel times between sites (matrix of durations). This is essential — without these times, the solver may place a teacher from 9:00 to 10:00 on site A and at 10:05 on site B, 5 km away, which is physically impossible.

Do not confuse site and campus: a campus is an organisational grouping configured in the general settings; a site carries the time grid, the classrooms and the travel times.

See Site for the use cases and limits (two virtual sites for the same location, choosing between multiple sites and multiple accounts, etc.).

Configuring the time grid

Each site carries its own time grid:

  • start / end times of the time slots,
  • breaks,
  • lunch break,
  • closures (Wednesday afternoon, Saturday…).

Standard lessons are attached to the time slots of this grid. If you later change the time of a slot, the lessons placed on it follow the new grid. Custom times and off-grid classes are special cases described in Time grid, time slots and durations.

Omniscol guesses the grid automatically from the information you enter, but review it and customise it — this matters for the display and for the algorithm.

The time slots should match the base lesson duration entered on the previous screen. If you specified 60 minutes, for example, for a standard lesson, then each slot will be considered to last 1 hour, regardless of the times actually entered — sometimes 50 or 55 minutes, this can vary slightly because of breaks. If the gap between theory and practice is too large, on a given slot, its times may turn red to warn you of a bad configuration.

Do not declare breaks as time slots! Any slot can host lessons (unless the period is marked as unavailable). A frequent mistake is to believe that the times have a direct impact: this is not the case — Omniscol places lessons on time slots, then displays them with the times entered for each slot concerned.

Entering the classrooms

For each site, create the classrooms. Fields:

  • Name (required),
  • Capacity (required — without this field, the solver cannot check the sizing),
  • Specialisations (chemistry, IT, sports… free-text),
  • Maximum number of classes for a large room (exam room, theatre, gymnasium, swimming pool, outdoors). This field only appears once a specialisation has been entered,
  • One or more campuses if the classroom should be preferred for a department, a faculty or a school in the automatic assignment, and for certain filters,
  • Building (optional),
  • Availability (useful for classrooms shared with another institution, or outdoor sports facilities),
  • Tags / comment (flip chart, power outlets, computers… free-text).

Associating a classroom with one or more campuses remains a distribution preference. If no classroom of the campus is compatible or available, Omniscol may assign another one.

You can create classrooms in bulk by copying and pasting from a spreadsheet.

Multi-room: assign several classrooms to the same lesson, for example for exams split across lecture halls or broadcast lectures.

Multi-room

Omniscol lets you assign several classrooms to the same lesson, with total capacity = the sum of the rooms. See Multi-room for the typical use cases (exams split across lecture halls, broadcast lectures, split lab sessions, etc.).

Specialisations

Specialisations (free-text fields) are used to indicate that a subject requires a particular type of classroom. The solver enforces them strictly.

Large room

A specialised classroom can become a large room: enter its Maximum number of classes so that it hosts several different lessons at the same time (distinct teachers and groups), within the limit of that number and of its capacity. This is the case for exam rooms, theatres, gymnasiums, swimming pools or outdoor spaces. The field only appears after the classroom has been given a specialisation.

Entering the resources

Resources are the mobile equipment not attached to a particular classroom (portable projectors, tablet carts, kits…). For each resource:

  • Name,
  • Available quantity.

A cart of 30 tablets counts as 1 (not 30) — you enter the number of carts.

There is no need to model resources you "always have enough" of — only do it for real shared limits.

Sites, classrooms and resources can be synchronised from an external system — each list then offers its own synchronisation button (Synchronize, Synchronize, Synchronize). See Synchronization with external systems.

What next

Next step: Assigning teachers.

How-to

Creating a site and its time grid

  1. A site models a distinct physical location, with its own time grid (time slots, breaks, lunch). At least one site is required. This procedure describes creating a site and its minimal dependencies (classrooms, resources).

  2. Click Create a site and give it a name (Bâtiment principal, Antenne Paris…). If you are starting with a single site, one site is enough. For multiple sites, add as many as there are physical locations to distinguish.

  3. Configure the time grid: start / end times of the slots, breaks between lessons, lunch break, closures (Wednesday afternoon, Saturday…).

  4. Enter the classrooms: name, capacity (a critical field for the solver), specialisations (chemistry, IT, sports…), opening hours, campus if your organisation uses them. The campus on a classroom serves to prefer it for certain classes, without blocking the other compatible classrooms. A classroom belongs to a single site — for a classroom used by several virtual sites, see Sites, classrooms, resources — concepts.

  5. Enter the resources (mobile equipment): name + available quantity. Only model resources with a real shared limit (portable projectors, a tablet cart, a microphone kit), not those you "always have enough" of.

  6. If you have multiple sites, enter the travel times via the distances popup (triangular half-matrix). Without these times, the solver teleports — see Multiple sites: policy and travel times for the nuances.

See also

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