Classic View: Scheduling > Scheduling Board
Search Terms: Scheduling Board
The Scheduling Board provides a visual representation of a school's overall schedule, much like a spread sheet or a magnetic white board to visualize and build the school's schedule. This visualization has been digitized in the Scheduling Board.
Users can easily see the schedule being built in real time, along with any teacher and room conflicts. Course sections can be dragged and dropped onto the schedule grid, and moved around to other terms and periods, or removed completely. Quickly load and unload course sections, build and unbuild all the courses, lock and unlock section rosters, all within one tool.
See the Scheduling Board landing page for the following:
- A Scheduling Timeline to stay on track for the entire scheduling season.
- Necessary tool rights for using the Scheduling Board.
- A comparison of what was done where in the Schedule Wizard and where that same task is done in the Scheduling Board.
Scheduling Board
This article provides information on how to use the Scheduling Board to place courses and course sections, how to assign teachers and rooms to course sections, how to load student course requests and provide guidance in creating the primary schedule for the next school year.
It does not cover every possible schedule design or calendar structure, nor does it attempt provide answers to optimizing student productivity.
Scheduling Board Navigation
The Scheduling Board replaces the Schedule Wizard, which is still available and can be used interchangeably with this new Scheduling Board.
At the top of the Scheduling Board are Settings, where changes to the schedule grid can be done, updates to highlight options (conflicts, missing data, etc.) are managed, and access to other scheduling tools are available. Settings determine how courses display in the grid.
Scheduling Board Settings
At the bottom of the Scheduling Board are Actions that can be done. Build and unbuild courses, load and unload courses, lock and unlock rosters, and save changes made or cancel any changes that have been made. Actions determine what happens to the courses on the grid.
Scheduling Board Actions
Settings
| Option | Description | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Set Placement Type | Lists either the Course Number by department or the Staff Name by department on the left hand side.
| ||
| Set Period Axis | Determines where the Periods display - across the top with Terms and Schedule Structure (X-axis), or down the side with the Course Names and Staff Names (Y-axis).
| ||
| Collapse All, Expand All | Collapses or expands all departments. This makes it easier to work with just one or two departments at a time. | ||
| Settings | Opens a side panel to set what displays as highlighted (conflicts, missing data, etc.); what displays on a course section (teacher name, room, team, etc.); what can be toggled on or off to show locked rosters and locked course builds; and what can be set to be show or hide (terms/period schedules, departments, singletons, etc.). See the Settings Side Panel section below for details. | ||
| Restore | Resets all settings to the original options. | ||
| Trial Name | Lists which trial is displayed. To choose a new trial, click Cancel or Save & Close in the Action Bar. This closes the Scheduling Board and returns the user to the Scheduling Board Trials to choose another trial or create a new trial. | ||
| More Scheduling Tools | Lists additional tools that may help with the scheduling of courses for the next year, like Staff Planner and Course Planner. | ||
| Hide/Display Setup Options | Hides or displays all Scheduling Board Settings. Changes made to courses that may be in a term or schedule or period that is marked as hidden are still made, even when they aren't displayed on the grid. |
Settings Side Panel
The Settings Side Panel determines what information is called out, highlighted or hidden in the grid. These items may need additional work done on them. For example, a course is displaying in red indicating there is a student to student conflict after loading student requests; or there are some empty sections that could alleviate the extra students in some of the overloaded sections.
Settings Side Panel
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Highlight | |
| Conflicts (Red) | Displays one or all of the following in redto show there is an issue (conflict) with the placement of the course section:
While all of these options can be selected to display at once, it works best when one checkbox is marked at a time. The example below is highlighting a singleton course, where only one instance of that course is placed on the board.
|
| Missing Data (Green) | Displays one or all of the following in greento show there is information missing with the placed course section.
While all of these options can be selected to display at once, it works best when one checkbox is marked at a time. The example below is highlighting a course that does not have a room assigned.
|
| Highlight (Yellow) | Displays one or all of the following in yellow to highlight their placement on the board:
While all of these options can be selected to display at once, it works best when one checkbox is marked at a time. The example below shows a course with an empty section.
|
| Mark Multiple Terms/Periods (Orange) | Displays which courses have sections that meet in multiple terms and multiple periods in orange. There may be instances where this section placement is correct, but verify those courses to be sure. The example below shows a course that meetings in period 1 and period 7.
|
| Display | |
| View On Section | Displays the selected option on the section placed on the grid. One of the following can be selected:
When a section does not have the selected option populated, the number of seats places vs. seats available displays instead. |
| View Locked | Displays icons that indicate the section build has been locked and the roster of that section has been locked. When the build has been locked, the section displays with a padlock after the seats filled/seats available totals. When the Rosters have been locked, the section displays with a crossed out student image after the seats filled/seats available totals. Both of these options can be marked at one time, which displays both the padlock and the student image to display.
|
| Show/Hide | |
| Terms, Period Schedules and Periods | Hides the terms, period schedules and periods that are marked from the grid. All other terms, period schedules and periods display. This is helpful when scheduling for just one term that has limited course offerings (maybe a January Term, for example) or scheduling for just the Activity or Homeroom period. In the example below, the terms are named as Term 1, 2, etc., with a single Period Schedule named Daily, and seven periods in the day, plus an activity period. Terms 1, 2 and 4 are hidden, so the focus is on Term 3.  A more complex calendar structure might include less terms but more period schedules and shorter days.In the example below, the calendar has three terms - T1, T2, and T3. Each term has 5 schedules - one for each day of the week - and seven periods each day. Hiding all terms and schedules for Terms 2 and 3, and hiding the schedules for the T, W, TH, F schedules and the HR period for Mondays provides a smaller view of the calendar.  |
| Departments | Allows certain departments to be hidden from the grid to focus on other departments. Use the Select All button to add all departments in the calendar to the field, then remove the ones you want to work with. Or type in the field to select specific departments to hide. |
| Courses | Allows certain courses to be hidden from the grid to focus on other courses. Use the Select All button to add all courses in the calendar to the field, then remove the ones you want to work with. Or type in the field to select specific courses to hide. |
| Hide All But Singletons | When marked, only courses that meet once during a term display on the grid. Due to the limited availability of these courses, it is advised that requests for these courses be loaded first. |
| Hide All Exception/Special Days | For schools that use Responsive Scheduling (e.g., Enrichment Days, Flex Time, etc.), marking this checkbox removes those days from the grid. Those days are scheduled a week or so in advance, so hiding them from the schedule when in the building/loading phase isn't necessary. |
Actions
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Save | Saves any changes made to the placement and loading/building of courses since the last save. Two options are available:
In order to avoid a trial being locked after you have exited the Scheduling Board and to avoid losing any changes that were made to the course grid, use one of these options.
|
| Cancel | Closes the selected trial. When changes have been made but NOT saved, an Unsaved Changes message displays asking whether those changes should be saves. Choose Stay to remain on the board and continue working, or choose Leave to close the board without saving the changes. |
| Build | Places course and section information on the board. It uses information from the Course Planner and Staff Planner, and from any existing course information data that has been rolled over from the previous calendar.
A build does NOT add student requests. A build places the course sections on the grid in a period that best fits the requirements of the course and the Builder Configuration settings.
|
| Load | Places student requests into the sections placed on the grid.
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| Lock Rosters | Locks or unlocks rosters for every course section placed on the grid for the students in the selected Grade Levels (selected in the Lock/Unlock All Rosters by Grade Side Panel). Only course sections with placed requests/students are locked/unlocked. This means sections without any students assigned to them are not locked/unlocked, allowing those sections to be manually loaded and manually locked/unlocked.  |
Build Settings Side Panel
The following table defines the available Build Configuration options.
Build Settings Configuration
Load Settings Side Panel
The following table defines the available Load Configuration options.
Load Settings
Other Side Panels
For each Term, Period, Course and Section, additional settings can be selected in the side panel. To open these side panels, right-click on the term/period/course/section. The options are the same for each item.
| Option | Available Actions | Image |
|---|---|---|
| Terms |
|  |
| Periods |
|  |
| Departments |
|  |
| Courses |
|  |
| Sections |
|  |
Hover Boxes
There are several places in the Scheduling Board where hovering over (placing the cursor over an entry on the board and leaving it there to display an information box) a section, a course or other area displays a window where key information may be found to aid the scheduler in placing sections, detecting issues and determining how successful the current trial meets the needs of students.
| Hover Selection | What Displays | Image |
|---|---|---|
| Terms |
|  |
| Periods |
The image to the right shows the information for Term 1, Period 1. Term 2, Period 2 could have different results depending on whether sections have been loaded or the same amount of sections have been placed in that period. |  |
| Departments |
The first number for any of these can be greater than the second number because sections, requests and seats can be manually created. |  |
| Courses |
|  |
| Sections |
|  |
Percentages
The information icon in the left corner displays statistics for the selected trial. The first statistic, Requests, indicates the number of requests satisfied over the total requests for all students, and the percentage of those two values. The second statistic, All Requests Satisfied, indicates the total students who have all of their requests satisfied over the number of total students, and the percentage of those two values. When a student does not have any course requests, that is included in the All Requests Satisfied percentage.
When a student is hand-scheduled into a course (therefore, there are no requests for those courses), or when the student has an alternate course request, the first number of the Requests percentage increases.
Show Stats Information
These same values also display on the Scheduling Board Trials side panel.
Create the Schedule
The Calendar has been created, students have entered course requests, and it's about 10 weeks to the end of the school year. It's time to start creating your course schedule.
A few tips as you get started:
- Refer to the Checklist of Scheduling and the Scheduling Center to stay on top of all tasks that need to be done for a successful scheduling season.
- Schedule subsets of students first.
- It's easiest to build the schedule for smaller sets of students, like Special Education students or those with a less than full time FTE at the school.
- When scheduling for the high school, start with the Seniors, as they have a limited time to meet their graduation requirements. Then work backwards through the grade levels (11, 10, etc.).
- Load singleton courses first. Students who request those courses have one chance to be scheduled into them.
- At least one trial is always active for a calendar. That means you can make and save changes in the board, mark that trial active, and navigate to the student's schedule to see how things look as many times as you need to.
- Work in the Scheduling Board to get as close to 100% requests complete as possible, knowing that at least some student schedules need to have gaps filled or be hand-scheduled throughout the summer. A percentage of 75-85% complete is great!
- Course sections can be moved or rebuilt many times, and sections can be loaded and unloaded many times. Keep working! You'll know when it's time to stop.
Let's get started!
NOTE: When saving changes takes minutes to complete AND your state uses Ed-Fi for collecting student and school data, verify Ed-Fi Configurations for past school years have been deleted.
The current school year and the last school year can remain. For example, a district that has configurations for the 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years can safely delete the 2019-20 and 2020-21 configurations.
Choose Settings for the Scheduling Board
See the Settings section for more information.
These settings are defined here.
- Select the Set Placement Type and the Set Period Axis preference.
- Select the Settings button and mark the desired options in the View Side Panel opens. This includes:
- Selecting which items to highlight in Red as a Conflict, in Green as Missing Data, and in Yellow as a Highlight.
- Selecting which items to View on Section and to View Locked.
- Selecting which Terms, Period Schedules and Periods to Show or Hide.
- Selecting which Departments to display as Show or Hide.
- Selecting which Courses to display as Show or Hide.
- Selecting whether to Hide All But Singletons.
- Selecting whether to Hide All Exception/Special Days.
- Click the Save button when finished. All selected options are now set and courses can now be built.
These settings can be changed at any time, or completely reset to return to the default settings.
The image below shows what the Board may look like when Settings have been marked to show conflicts, missing data and highlight courses and courses have been built and loaded.
Settings Marked for Course Build
Build All Courses
First, verify your Build Settings are marked appropriately.
- Click the Build button in the Action Bar across the bottom, and choose Settings.
- In the Build side panel, review the options listed and make any changes necessary.
- Click Save when finished.
Build Settings
Next, build the courses.
- Click the Build button in the Action Bar across the bottom.
- Choose Run Full Build. A Building progress bar displays indicating how far along the build is. This process is fairly quick. For larger schools and schools with several terms, period schedules and periods, it may take longer to build.
- When the Build is finished, course sections are visible in the board based on the selected Build Settings.
Run Full Build on Blank Grid Builds Courses Based on Build Settings
At this point, you can:
- Work with an individual course to load sections for it manually.
- Load the course sections for a specific Department.
- Move placed courses around to different periods to see what that does to the other courses.
- Load the course sections to see how the course sections populate.
Unbuild All Courses
It's possible the building of the courses was done prematurely, or you want to load only certain courses first. Removing the placed courses can be done at anytime and as often as needed.
- Click the Build button in the Action Bar across the bottom.
- Choose Run Full Unbuild. This removes any course that has been placed on the board that is not locked. A Building progress bar displays indicating how far along the unbuild is.
- When finished, the board is empty, unless that section was locked.
Load All Courses
Loading is done AFTER Building. It loads the student requests into the course sections that were built. Like the Build option, loading can be done for a specific course, a particular department or a particular section. Or, load all courses all at once to see how many student requests are met.
First, verify your Load Settings are marked appropriately.
- Click the Load button in the Action Bar across the bottom, and choose Settings.
- In the Load side panel, review the options listed and make any changes necessary.
- Click Save when finished.
Load Settings
Next, load the courses.
- Click the Load button in the Action Bar across the bottom.
- Choose Run Full Load. A Building progress bar displays indicating how far along the build is. This process is fairly quick. For larger schools and schools with several terms, period schedules and periods, it may take longer to build.
- When the Load is finished, course sections now display on the grid and most sections have a count total.
Run Full Load
In the image above, the Keyboarding class had 26 requests fulfilled, and there are 30 possible seats for that section.
At this point, you can:
- Unload the sections and change Settings to see how that changes the build.
- Work with an individual course section to alter how it is loaded by changing the maximum students allows in the section or load by grade level and gender.
- Unload the section or all sections, and start over.
Unload All Courses
It's possible the loading of the course sections was done prematurely, or you want to load only certain courses first. Removing the placed course sections can be done at anytime and as often as needed.
- Click the Load button in the Action Bar across the bottom.
- Choose Run Full Unload. This removes a student from that section, as long as the rosters were not locked.
- When the unload is finished, the courses no longer have requests placed.
Lock All Rosters
In a school that has a small student population, limited course offerings and a standard schedule, this first build of the courses and the first load of the requests may have met your completed schedules threshold. You can lock the rosters now!
- Click the Lock Rosters button. A Lock All Rosters by Grade side panel opens.
- All grade levels are selected automatically. When all rosters for all grade levels should be locked, click the Lock button at the bottom of the panel; when rosters for a certain grade level should be locked, remove the checkbox from the other grade levels and click the Lock button.
- The board processes for a short time. When it's finished, a green message displays indicating rosters have been locked. When the Display Settings for View Locked are marked for Rosters, the course sections display with a crossed out student image, indicating the roster has been locked.
Lock Rosters
Unlock All Rosters
It's possible the locking of rosters was done prematurely and you want to unlock all course sections. Or, you meant to only lock the seniors scheduled into those sections. Unlocking the sections can be done at anytime and as often as needed.
- Click the arrow next to the Lock Rosters button in the Action Bar across the bottom.
- Choose Unlock Rosters. The Unlock All Rosters by Grade side panel displays.
- Remove the checkbox from the desired grade levels to leave some rosters locked and some unlocked. Or leave all grade levels marked for unlocking.
- Click Unlock. When the process finishes, the course section rosters are no longer locked.
Build, Move and Delete Course Sections using Drag and Drop
The Scheduling Board is designed to build all course sections for the entire school as easily and as quickly as possible. There are situations where certain courses are best built manually, like when that course is a singleton or when that course meets just once in a specific term in a specific period.
Build New Course Sections
The Scheduling Board allows courses and sections to be dragged onto the grid and placed where they best meet the needs of the course and students who requested the course. This requires the Build Setting of Drag and Drop: Enable preferred section placement to be marked. A Conflict Matrix or "heat map" locates the best placements for that section. The three best placements for that new section are displayed, and includes the teacher and room assignments. The first placement is the same location the Auto-Build logic would choose when a single section were placed.
- Locate the course to build.
- Click on it and drag it into the period grid.
- Drop it in the desired period. The section is placed and the build for the section is locked.
- At this point, requests can be loaded, teachers and rooms can be assigned, plus other options listed in the section side panel.
Drag and Drop Course Section
Move Course Sections
Moving course sections also uses a Conflict Matrix to determine the best placement for a section. The three best placements for that new section are displayed, and includes the teacher and room assignments. The first placement is the same location the Auto-Build logic would choose when a single section were placed.
When a course is built, sometimes just one section of the course needs to be moved to a different period. Use the same process of selecting that section and dragging it to a new period and dropping it.
- Locate the section on the grid that needs to be moved.
- Click on it and drag it into the desired period.
- Drop it in the desired period. The section is placed in the new period and the build for the section is locked.
- At this point, requests can be loaded, teachers and rooms can be assigned, plus other options listed in the section side panel.
Drag and Drop Assigned Period
Delete Course Sections
Delete a section by dragging the section completely to the left on the course grid.
Delete a Drag and Drop Section
Next Steps
- Continue loading and unloading courses, and moving course sections on the grid to get to your desired percentage of requests satisfied. When you get to that point, mark the Scheduling Board Trial active and congratulate yourself!
- Access the Staff Planner and Course Planner to aid in the scheduling of the course sections.
- Refer to the Scheduling Center to see what other actions need to be taken for scheduling.
- Refer to the Beginning of Year checklist to see what other tasks can be considered complete for the beginning of the school year.
