Timeline and time navigation

Every Omniscol screen that displays a schedule or statistics carries a timeline (the "banner") at the top of the page. It is how you navigate through time: choosing the school year, the displayed period, and — on some screens — switching from a week view to a month or year view.

This page explains the shared principles; each module has its own specifics, covered on its dedicated page.

Timeline buttons

The timeline exposes left / right arrows on its two opposite sides:

• the left arrow ← goes back to the previous school year,
• the right arrow → moves forward to the next school year (the next school year being prepared, for example).

The year (or period) currently displayed is usually named explicitly above the timeline.

The classic oversight: the right arrow

The Timetable management module displays the current school year by default. When a planner prepares the next school year, they must explicitly click the right arrow of the timeline to switch to the next school year before they can distribute / publish their timetable on it. On this specific screen, you can also move from one year to another by clicking the school year. The current one is shown in green, the next one in orange.

Time views by module

Not all modules expose the same granularities:

The view toggle buttons sit next to the timeline, usually above it on the left. The year and free date-to-date range views are mostly found in the Dashboard, where they serve cross-period statistics.

School year displayed by default

The current school year (configured in Administration) is displayed by default in every module for every user.

• When viewing their timetable, teacher and student accounts see only the current year. No access to past or preparatory years on the portal side. This is deliberate: for them, the timetable is about today.
• Absences can be declared only for the current school year. You cannot retroactively declare an absence for a past year, nor declare one in advance for the next year.
• Administrators, however, can navigate between years through the timeline — hence the value of understanding the arrows.

The current school year is also the one used for exports and synchronization with external software.

When you switch the current school year

Typical sequence:

1. Year N in progress. You work in parallel on year N+1 in Timetable management, through the right arrow. All users still see year N on their portals and their absences.
2. Final preparation for the start of year N+1: the N+1 timetable is published on the corresponding weeks (but the current year remains N).
3. Just before the school year starts, when you are ready for everyone to switch to N+1: change the current school year in Administration → School year.
4. Immediate effect: every user sees N+1 by default from that moment on. The teacher and student accounts access their new timetable. Absences are declared on N+1.

The exact moment of the switch depends on your institution — often the day before school starts, once everything is validated, sometimes the morning school starts to keep a margin for checks. No rush: you keep read access to the past year as history.

School year ≠ calendar year

A school year in Omniscol does not necessarily run September → August. Frequent special cases:

• Continuing-education providers — often aligned with the calendar year (January 1 → December 31). Define your school year with these dates in Administration → School year; everything works the same.
• Universities with shifted semesters or long cycles (intensive modules over 18 months) — you can define school years of non-standard length.