School scheduling/timetabling software
Prime Timetable team
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Posts by Prime Timetable team
Prime Timetable for mobile
Jun 20th
Prime Timetable is web based school timetable software that works natively on both Mac and Windows as well as in any modern browser. Ever wondered if it could work on your mobile phone? Well, it can 
. We have made it accessible on any device with Internet access! In other words, now you can use your mobile phone to sign in and browse through your school timetables. Also, the teachers and students you have shared your timetable with can view it on their mobile phone.
Do you have to do anything to enable this? No. Our software will automatically detect your device and instead of full blown Prime Timetable application, a new Mobile Timetable will be shown, which is entirely built using standard web technologies accessible everywhere. Mobile Timetable enables you to browse your timetables and choose different views. Similar to how Prime Timetable works – just click on the first column to switch to single view.
Mobile Timetable works on iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, Nokia and other smartphones and tablets
Here are some timetable examples that are accessible via mobile phone: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3, Brazil Example.
Dear timetablers, make the best of these unique timetabling features. Reach other teachers and students, seamlessly share timetables and collaborate using modern online technologies accessible everywhere. Happy mobile timetabling!
Share timetable – publish to the Web
Jun 9th
So, you’ve created your timetable and would like others to see it. Prime Timetable makes sharing easy: just choose ‘Share -> Publish to the Web’ and click Publish to the Web button, and voila! Your timetable will be visible to anyone you’ve shared the link with. Published web page will be accessible by any Internet device, so that people you share with can access the timetable even from their mobile phone.
To configure the published page, set a default view and whether visitor can switch timetable view. Now you can copy the provided link or visit the published web page.
You needn’t worry about any subsequent changes to the published timetable. The published web page will be automatically updated when the timetable is saved. Furthermore, the published web page will refresh every 20 minutes to make sure the latest timetable version is delivered to all.
If you want to stop publishing timetable, just click Unpublish button and your timetable will not be visible to others.
Here are some online examples of published timetables: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3, Example Brazil, Example Egypt, etc. As always, you can click on the first column to open single timetable view. When printing, the header and rounding corners will be hidden, so that the timetable expands as much as possible on the paper.
Screenshot of online timetable – Example 1
Screenshot of published timetable for class 5-A
Screenshot of published timetable for teacher BronteShare timetable with teachers, publish it for students, receive feedback… the possibilities are endless. And yes, publishing is available in both free and comercial Prime Timetable editions. So, happy timetable sharing and share your feedback with us .
Introducing 3D school timetable
May 28th
The problem that bothers all timetablers around the world is about resolving lesson conflicts. But how to spot a lesson conflict in a 2D timetable? How to discover that under a card there is another card or many more? The answer is simple.
Our school timetable software will automatically rotate all conflicted cards in the current timetable view. Each conflicted card is slightly rotated by 30° to the left and right respectively. Also, each card has its own Z-order on Z-axis, thus creating a 3D timetable. But wait, there is more.
Screenshot of school timetable with lots of conflicted cards
All conflicted cards are smartly arranged for you. Larger and pinned cards are always at the bottom so as to avoid rotating and the active card is placed on the top. Clicking a card at the bottom brings it to the front, while other cards automatically rearrange. To emphasize 3D even more, shadow of a card being dragged is darker when dragged over the conflicted cards and lighter when there are no cards below. As always, to bring you the best timetabling experience all rearranging, rotating and moving is smoothly animated.
Screenshot of school timetable with several rotated cards
Screenshot of correct school timetable with all conflicts resolved
In the first screenshot there are conflicted cards for 7-D class and for teachers Plutarch and Darwin which are positioned above other non-conflicted surrounding cards. On the last screenshot conflicts are resolved using automatic timetable generator without a single card being rotated.
To sum things up: now you can even visually spot card conflicts without starting timetable validation. Just make sure that there are no rotated cards in the class, teacher or room view (extra views can help too). And if for some reason you don’t want it, uncheck “Rotate conflicted cards” in Help -> Options.
Although playing with smoothly animated cards can be a game-like experience to pass the time 
, we sincerely wish you happy 3D timetabling with no conflicts!
Extra school timetable views
May 25th
Sometimes you want to adjust certain lessons/cards using only drag & drop (also known as manual timetabling). And just when you have found the perfect lesson position in teacher view, you switch to room view only to find that the card is in conflict with an already scheduled lesson in the same room, or you switch to the class view and see the current class already has a lesson in that period. And then you end up constantly switching views (and trying to memorize them!?) in order to find a suitable card position, which is rather annoying, you will agree. Guess what? Not anymore.
We have added a new timetabling feature to improve your efficiency: the possibility to add extra timetable view(s). These views are fully interactive, just like the main view, meaning you can use all timetabling tools as usual, e.g. timetable generator, drag & drop, pin, sponge, undo/redo, etc. and all opened timetable views will be automatically updated.
To open extra timetable view just click on teacher, class, room or subject icon in the bottom left corner when a card is selected. You can easily adjust position and size of extra view which best fits your screen, and by clicking the first column you can navigate to single extra view.
In the screenshot below there is a class view, room view and two single teacher views all on one screen (!), so you can easily find the perfect position for a specific lesson. Currently selected card in one view will be highlighted in all other views. Also, when doing drag & drop, the shadow of the card being dragged will be shown in all opened views which allow you to track drop position, e.g. check that drop position is not already scheduled in another view.
Main view with 3 extra views added
Feel free to use your imagination and creativity in organizing extra views and see where it gets you . We are excited to see how you are going to use this unique timetabling feature in your school timetables.
Online school software at full speed
Apr 8th
Online services like Facebook, Gmail and others deliver only a small amount of data initially (e.g. only the first 20 statuses or 50 emails…). The general idea is to get the smallest data set possible and to work correctly even on slow Internet connections.
One of the challenges we at Prime Timetable face while creating the world’s first online school timetable software is that all school data should be loaded before the timetable is drawn on the initial screen. That means that all entered subjects, rooms, teachers, classes and their groups and lessons, including various constraints, need to be loaded first. In large schools/colleges with 500 and more subjects/teachers that can take a while.
We have taken this challenge seriously and made lots of optimizations for loading, saving and importing timetables:
- All data sent over the wire is compressed, making it 5-20x smaller than before.
- Once a timetable is loaded, it is stored on your computer, so the next time it is opened directly from your computer (of course, in the background we check if there are changes on the server and load them too).
- When saving, all timetable changes are instantly saved on your computer first, so that you can immediately continue your timetabling work, while changes are transferred to our server in the background.
We believe that speed of Prime Timetable online service will pleasently surprise you. Don’t worry about technical details (yes, we use server cache and pre-fetch techniques too) because you will never even notice them, unless you are curios and read our blog . For all of you out there who have special needs, we offer offline timetabling, while the rest of you can enjoy online timetabling at full speed.
Better timetable view performances
Apr 7th
Recently we got some pretty large schools/colleges using Prime Timetable with number of subjects/teachers as high as 500 (!) and even more. That makes up to 20000+ timetable cards to display in the school timetable, so we have decided to devote some time to timetable view performances. Here are some results that are especially visible in bigger timetables:
- Displaying timetable view is now 10-20x faster than it was before.
- No need to wait for timetable to finish drawing. You can use application while timetable is being drawn.
- Timetable is continually displayed so you get immediate response.
- Prime Timetable will automatically adjust according to your computer’s performances, e.g. faster computers will display the animation of cards moving, fading, etc., while slower computers won’t have such smooth experience.
- Using zoom in and zoom out is instant, without timetable view refreshing.
Screenshot with cards flying into timetable
Overall, we are pleased with the new timetable view performances and hope you will like them too. Just don’t tell us that your school has 10000 teachers .
Online and offline timetabling
Apr 5th
When Prime Timetable 1.0 was released back in June 2009, one of the first feedbacks we’ve received was from a school which doesn’t have full-time Internet access, requesting offline version of our software. Ironical, isn’t it? We thought that we live in an online world where Internet connection is always accessible so we have built the world’s first online school timetable software as a service. But we were wrong. After some time, we’ve received similar feedback from other schools which don’t like reliable Internet connection requirement, too.
Therefore, we are very happy to announce that from this day on we will support both online and offline school timetabling for our customers. Even if your Internet connection is dropped or you are only occasionally connected you can still continue working on your timetables. When Internet connection is back your local changes will be synchronized with our server so that you can share your timetable with others.
For our premium customers we’ve made one step further in enabling offline timetabling work. Just go to Help -> Options and click Install Prime Timetable button which will install Prime Timetable on your computer. You will get the newly installed program in Program Files and a new desktop icon. Starting Prime Timetable from your desktop allows you to access your timetables whenever you want with or without Internet connection and thus avoid going to Prime Timetable web site and signing in.
And now, please forgive me, I need to finish some timetabling work while I’m offline. Disconnecting, good bye.
Browsing timetables using back and forward
Apr 5th
Prime Timetable is an online school timetable service that works in your browser of choice. It is quite common that you will want to use the browser’s back and forward button to browse through previously opened timetables. This has been possible since the beginning, but we have made some improvements that we would like to share with you:
- Clicking back or forward button will not refresh the web page, meaning previous or next timetable will be opened and its cards will immediately fly into existing timetable view.
- If current view is single entity view, then default timetable view (specified in options) will show up instead.
- You can click on back or forward button while timetable setup window is open and all grids and view will be refreshed as well. The browser’s URL will be changed and you can copy/paste timetable link.
- Browsing through previously opened timetables is a lot faster now, almost instant, because we are caching opened timetables on your computer. However, in the background we will check if some other user has made changes in the meantime and load them.
Clicking back button in browser will show previously open timetable
These are all small improvements, but we think that it will make browsing timetables a lot faster and better. Happy timetable browsing!