Scheduling Optimizer, what is new in the software, releases and betas

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November 2005: The Scheduling Optimizer joins SASI!

Tabby Software is pleased to announce that Pearson School Systems will integrate our Scheduling Optimizer technology into its SASI student information system.

Read the press release: Pearson School Systems Announces SASI Scheduling Enhancements (PDF file)

The Tabby Scheduling Optimizer will be included with SASI in the upcoming release 7.0.

Go to Pearson School Systems for more information.

June 13, 2005: Newsletter

Our June Newsletter is available.

June 12, 2005: Beta 6.11b

Click here to request the new beta version 6.11b.

Version 6.11b beta released June 12, 2005 with the following new feature:

Enhancement to the Resource Schedule Grid Reports

The Resource Schedule Grids generate printable individual teacher and room schedules in a grid, or matrix, format. This report group is changed so that report options which do not sort schedules by term display each term's schedule side by side across the same page for each teacher or room; the "by term" options generate one schedule page per term for each teacher or room, as before.

Click here to see our online demonstration of the reports with their new features.

February 15, 2005: Newsletter

Our February Newsletter is available.

More information for Printing Reports

January 10, 2005: New Release 6.10

Click here to request the new release 6.10.

These are the features and changes included in this release of the Scheduling Optimizer.

Works with latest SASIxp

The Scheduling Optimizer is compatible with SASIxp versions 4.5 and higher.

New Report - Resource Schedule Grids

An additional report group, Resource Schedule Grids, has been added. The Resource Schedule Grids generate printable individual teacher and room schedules in a grid, or matrix, format.

Sections with zero maximums now included in simulations

Handling of sections with zero section maximums is changed. Earlier Optimizer versions filtered out sections with 0 limits on input; this version includes them. You no longer need to ensure that sections with prescheduled students have a section maximum of 1 or more; a section with a zero maximum will be included in the simulation and students who are prescheduled to it will be assigned correctly. You can still exclude sections from simulation runs by entering a value of -1 in the section maximum field.

Override maximum number of patterns in schedule search

The Optimizer now allows you to adjust the maximum number of patterns it will search before abandoning an attempt to find a schedule for a student. In most cases, the program either finds a schedule or determines that no schedule is possible well before exhausting its default maximum number of patterns. For some schools, however, increasing the maximum patterns parameter can produce significantly better scheduling results; the tradeoff is that you will experience longer simulation run times. Details on the use of this parameter are provided in comments in the optional parameters file, xparms.spi.

Specify term ranges in term preference/overrides

The Scheduling Optimizer now observes term preference/override entries in student course requests which include a range of more than one term. Previously, the Optimizer handled only a single term or all terms; if term preference/override entries expressed as a range of more than one term were encountered, they were treated as specifying all terms and a warning message was generated to the run log.

Enhancements - Master Schedule Grids

New features to help with team scheduling have been added to the Master Schedule Grids. The "by teacher" versions of the Master Schedule Grids now display the teacher group (or groups) to which each teacher belongs. Two new report options, "Teacher Group by Term" and "Teacher Group", display only teachers belonging to at least one teacher group sorted by the first teacher group for each included teacher.

Printer friendly versions of all reports

All reports now provide a printer friendly option allowing you to display the complete report content in an unframed page.

Enhancements - Master Schedule Lists

The Master Schedule Lists report group has been substantially revised to improve readability and facilitate report printing. Separator lines clearly delineate courses, teachers and rooms and within these groups repeating values of the same field are suppressed.
An onscreen option allows limiting the selected report to only schedules which include duplicate meeting times. With this option turned on, teacher and room schedules highlight classes which meet at the same time with the same teacher or in the same room to allow quick verification that the combined class placements are intentional. With this option turned on, lists that are sorted by course highlight meeting times used by more than one section; this may suggest opportunities to schedule more students by rescheduling one of the overlapping sections.

Free Resource Grids and Lists combined

Free Resource Grids and Lists are now combined into one report group called Free Resource Reports. A separator line is now generated for each new period on the Teacher and Room lists for improved readability.

Enhancement - Request Conflict Pairs

Row borders show at both the beginning and end of each course group to more clearly identify the beginning of a new group.

Click here to request the new release 6.10.

Click here to see our online demonstration of the reports with their new features.

Click here to see a complete product overview - Scheduling Optimizer Features.

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