There are two ways to create a two-week timetable using Prime Timetable. One obvious way is to create one timetable and set 10 days. But that is not what you want to do if you need to make a two-week timetable with almost identical lessons. For example, let's assume that 4 days in a week have exactly the same timetable and there are some differences only on Friday. In this scenario we have two types of lessons:
- (A) Lessons that are held the same number of times in both weeks
- (B) Lessons that are held over one week but not the other.
All other variations boil down to these (A) and (B) types. For instance, there could be a lesson occurring 1.5 times per week, which means there are two lessons in the first week and one in the second. In that case one lesson is type (A) and the other (0.5) is type (B).
Here is the procedure of scheduling such two-week timetables using Prime Timetable:
- Create a new timetable with 5 days.
- Add all type (A) lessons using Manage > Activities > Add.
- Forbid Friday using the red marker (just pick the red marker and click on Friday in the timetable view)
- Generate the timetable using play icon.
- Fix all cards using the pin (just pick the pin and click in the top right corner of the timetable)
- Pick the red marker and click once again on Friday to remove the forbidden positions. Click all other days to forbid lessons on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
- Save two copies of this timetable: Week 1 and Week 2 using Save As > Copy of Timetable.
- For each timetable add type (B) lessons and generate the timetable again.
Of course, there are many more variations but the procedure is similar.
Creating a school timetable requires a lot of work. Sometimes, you want to see whether the automatic generator can generate an even better timetable, at other times you want to manually change card positions using drag & drop and sometimes it's just an accidental mistake. It's very important that you can undo or redo changes whenever you want.
From the very first version of Prime Timetable it was possible to undo/redo any view changes by clicking undo 
and redo 
. Recently, we have added a new history icon 
which lets you see all previous changes. You can undo all or some of them with just one mouse click. History list is also helpful because every action has its description, for instance: 1 card dragged, 2 marks erased, 240 cards changed by generator, 1 card cleared, 2 positions marked as mandatory... so you get a clear picture of all previous changes.
Although history is very similar to what you are already using in Microsoft Excel, Word or Adobe Photoshop, there is a fine catch in the Prime Timetable. Both undo/redo and multiple undo are animated (!), so you can see the cards moving from one position to another. Also, all changes are tracked in the instant validation window, which helps you decide which position better suits you.
NOTE: This is an old blog post from 2012. Nowadays, it's much easier to start by watching getting started video tutorials.
So, you have been tasked to create a timetable for your school and are looking for a timetabling guide, manual or something that can assist you on the way. Well, this is it: a quick guide for easier introduction to Prime Timetable. It might take you 10-15 minutes, but it's still far less than reading online help or manual. Without further ado, let's start with timetabling terms.
Timetabling terms
There are many different educational institutions which use different terms. In short:
- timetable = schedule
- class = grade
- subject = course or activity, and
- lessons = sections.
Feeling confused? Check basic timetabling terms.
Creating a free account
If you haven't created a free account so far, go to our plans page and choose a free plan. Registration is easy and it only takes a minute. After the registration, Prime Timetable will be loaded and an empty timetable will show up.
We suggest that you get familiar with the interface by clicking clicking Open icon to browse through other timetable examples, which can be a great resource for learning and understanding. Obviously, there is no data so you need to enter some to enable timetabling tools.
Days and periods
In order to manage days and periods, mouse-over the owl and choose Manage > Days and Periods from the menu.
First you need to decide how many (working) days there will be in the cycle. For a 2-week timetable it may be 10, and for a 1-week timetable it may be 5.
Next, you need to decide how many periods are there in a day. This might be tricky, because one day there might be 8 periods and other days up to 10 periods. The general rule of the thumb is to choose the maximum period number; in this case that would be 10.
The number of periods is directly related to the number of lessons/activities per day, so you might optionally add lunch, break and similar activities and count them as a period. Many schools have different period intervals on different days and in that case you can add custom periods.
Subjects, rooms, teachers and classes
Before entering data, you should know that there are various importing options. For instance you can import data from Microsoft Office (Word, Excel) or from Google Docs simply by using copy/paste. Otherwise, you can enter data manually:
Choose Manage > Subjects to add subjects/courses, e.g. Math, History, etc. Lunch, break and other school activities can also be subjects.
Choose Manage > Room to add rooms/cabinets, e.g. Biology room, History room, Gym, dining room, reception hall, etc.
Choose Manage > Teachers to add teachers.
Choose Manage > Classes to add classes/grades. Choose a class from the grid and click Divisions to manage class divisions and groups, e.g. you can create English and French groups.
Manage activities
Choose Manage > Activities to add activities/lessons. Select teacher(s), subject, classes (and/or its groups), activities per cycle count, activity length and desired room(s) where a lesson can occur and/or alternative room(s).
When activities are entered, the related cards are placed in the unscheduled panel of the timetable in related row.
Saving changes and history
Click save icon to save changes. Use undo and redo to undo/redo latest changes.
Master view
Click view indicator 
to change the current master timetable view, so you can see classes, teachers, rooms or subjects master view.
Extra view
Instead of switching views it might be useful to see more than one view on the screen, in which case you should use extra views.
Individual view
To choose individual class, teacher, room or subject view click on the desired first column in the timetable.
Adding constraints
Marker draws or erases forbidden, unwanted or mandatory card positions for classes, teachers, rooms and subjects.
Automatic generator
Click play icon to start the automatic timetable generator. Before you do that, you may use the pin 
to fix the cards which are already on desired positions, so that they won't be moved during the generation process. The automatic generator will try to find the best solution by rearranging cards in order to solve all constraints and avoid any conflicts. Total generation progress is displayed in the window title as well as progress for specific categories: card conflicts, forbidden positions, class gaps, same day subjects, unwanted or mandatory positions, class and teacher warnings.
Notifications
Notification number in the bell icon shows the total number of errors or warnings. The number is instantly updated along with all notifications upon any change. The bell icon shows or hides the notification list. The notification list can be dragged and resized to best suit your device screen. The timetable is valid if there are no notifications, which means that all entered requirements and constraints have been resolved. The red notification indicates that the timetable has a fatal error which needs to be fixed, whereas the blue one represents a warning. When red or blue notifications are clicked, related cells will blink in the view, making it easy to spot the problem. To stop blinking click the notification category title or click the bell icon to hide the whole notification list.
Manual timetabling
Cards can be manually dragged using the mouse or you can use sponge 
to remove them from the timetable.
Customize cards
Choose Print > Card Designer or use right mouse click on any card to customize text, text positions, colors and borders in both master and individual timetable views as best suits your school needs. The configured template will be used in the newly created timetable and published timetable as well.
Share with colleagues
Need help? Choose Share > Share with Others to share the school account with other teachers and colleagues and assign them privileges. The "owner" can manage other users, the "creator" can create and modify timetables and the "viewer" can only view timetables.
Publish to the web
With one click you can publish a timetable, so it is visible on the web and students can see it. Just choose Share > Publish to the Web. The published timetable is accessible by any smartphone or tablet and is automatically updated when the timetable is modified.
Print
When you are done with customization, what you see on the screen is what is going to be printed. You can print both master and individual timetable views and Prime Timetable will automatically do the paging. Choose Print > Print Timetable View or Print > Print All Individual Timetables.
The conclusion
This is just a quick timetabling guide to get you started. Feel free to use our online user voice to add your ideas and suggestions on how we can improve Prime Timetable.
One of the main purposes of school scheduling/timetabling software is to help schools with automatic timetable generation and validation. In order to use automatic generator and validator you should follow the basic timetabling rule which says:
One school resource during one school period can be scheduled in only one lesson. Otherwise, there is a conflict.
In the Prime Timetable, the conflicted cards are rotated so you can easily spot and fix them. There are two common approaches to fixing conflicts:
- Add more than one teacher or class/group in the lesson or remove redundant lessons/cards.
- Just ignore conflicted cards.
Add more than one teacher or class/group
If there is more than one teacher or more than one class/group attending a lesson, you should not create more than one lesson for it.
When adding a new lesson just add another teacher or class/group to it. Thus, you've created only 1 lesson/card and therefore there are no conflicts/rotation and automatic timetable generation and validation will work as expected.
Ignore cards
If for some reason you want to keep the position of conflicted cards and still take advantage of automatic timetable generation and validation, you might want to ignore them.
For instance, there could be lots of classes/grades using the Fellowship Hall/Gym at the same time, which creates many conflicts in the room view. Nevertheless, you can create only one lesson and include all those classes or just ignore the Gym.
In order to ignore cards, do the following:
- Set "-" (without quotes) as a short name for any school resource which is part of the lesson/card you want to ignore. For instance, you can set short name to "-" for subject Lunch or for Gym room.
- Check Help > Options > Exclude fake lessons while generating timetable.
- Click Ok.
And that's all you need to do. Automatic timetable generator will just ignore those cards and treat them as if they are not part of the timetable.
Prime Timetable makes it easy to exchange school data with other software, whether you need to import or export. In both cases exchanging data reduces needless retyping.
How to import school data from Microsoft Office and Google Docs?
Whenever you open an empty timetable the owl will remind you about all importing options, so you don't have to remember them. Typically, you would want to import, e.g. list of teachers already entered in Microsoft Excel or Word or Google Docs. Make a selection, copy (Ctrl + C) and paste it (Ctrl + V) into the proper (teacher's) data grid in the Prime Timetable. Our software will smartly recognize the format and do the parsing and importing for you.
If your data is stored in CSV (comma separated value) file, just drag that file from your desktop directly into the data grid and that's it. Again, the software will recognize the format and import all data.
Copy and paste works across all data grids in our software, which means you can copy rows from one timetable and paste them into another one.
How to export school data to Microsoft Office and Google Docs?
You can export any data from Prime Timetable into Microsoft Office and Google Docs. Just select the desired data grid rows, copy (Ctrl + C) and paste them (Ctrl + V) into e.g. Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Word. Data grid header will also be included.
We believe that exchanging data with widely used software (Microsoft Office, Google Docs and others) will significantly improve your efficiency.