This article addresses common issues and possible resolutions related to Master Scheduling.
When checking settings, ensure you are checking the correct Scheduling Year.
General Issues
Scheduling Engine fails at 15% or 50%
- Check red-light green light errors
- From Scheduling > School Setup, confirm that relevant periods are included in the shift.
- From the Scheduler Setup Wizard, confirm that relevant periods are included as the default (please note the first line is NOT Default, it is the last line with the word “Default” if it is blank the run will fail) for Conditional Period range.
- From Reports > Preschedule Edit - confirm that at least one section has been created
- From Scheduling > Requests > confirm that at least one course request has been approved.
- From Reports > Scheduling > Resource Class Report, choose the next scheduling year and export to Excel, and look at the Periods column and check to see if there are any period numbers that are higher than the number of periods in the selected school year/school combination.
- Please double check that the district did not modify/delete or otherwise change the school setup particularly Day codes and Semester Patterns. This can be verified by running the Reports > Scheduling > Master Schedule Reports for the school year and export to excel and confirm that there are no day patterns and/or Semester Patterns that appear in the export that are not present in the school setup area.
- If the above are correct, refer to the eSD Data Team.
Students are unable to request courses
- From Student > Profile > Edit - confirm that the schedule school and grade are set
- From Scheduling > Courses - confirm that the “offered” option is checked
- From Scheduling > Courses - check for grade restrictions
Student didn’t get a request at the top of the sort
- Ensure that the request has been approved
- Pre-scheduled requests are always fulfilled first. Special requests (section requests, teacher requests) can eliminate scheduling possibilities. Check the students who did get into the course to see if they were pre-scheduled into those sections.
- Check the student who didn’t get into the class to see if there were any “not this teacher” or “not this student” constraints.
- Request priority is partially determined by the tally of sections for each request, which is re-calculated for each student during the sectioning process. It may not be possible to schedule the student into the course even though it is at the top of the sort for that student. Review the Potential Conflict Matrix to ensure singletons with a high number of common requests are not offered during the same meeting time.
Courses and Sections
Students are not being placed into courses or sections
- From Scheduling > Courses - confirm that the “offered” option is still checked
- From Scheduling > Courses > Classes and/or Resource Classes - confirm that if grade restrictions are set up, students have the appropriate scheduling grades
- Confirm the overall seat capacity and SN seat capacity from Classes and/or Resource Classes
- From District > Rooms > Confirm the room capacity for the sections in question
- From Student Requests, see if there are any restrictions such as not this teacher, not this student, specific section, etc.
- From the Drag and Drop interface, confirm that the resource section was not created after the run. (Look for the “N” icon on the section chip)
- From the Scheduling Setup wizard, check the seat loading factor is at least 100%.
- Confirm that the requests have been approved
Sectioning numbers are low - overall percentage of students scheduled is low
- Oversubscribed courses can be identified using the Pre-Schedule edit report. If you have more requests than seats available, numbers will be low. (Try temporarily increasing the seat capacity on the scheduler setup wizard to see if you are hitting seat capacity limits. If the scheduling percentage is still low, then the problem most likely lies in the placement of sections, not the seat capacity).
- Use the Potential Conflict Matrix to identify courses with a high number of requests and be sure that those sections are not placed in the same period.
- Students are prioritized based on the complexity of their schedules. Schedule complexity (class links, singletons, restrictions) will drive the number of attempts in the reject phase
- Course section placement issues can be identified using the Rejects by Course report
- From District > Schools - check the weighting value assigned to special ed students
Student didn’t receive a linked class (Class link)
- If there are sections which do not have class links defined, students will be scheduled into the unlinked sections. This is the correct behavior
- Complex schedules which include an exceedingly high number of linked sections will require a greater number of attempts during the reject phase. The reject phase may be completed before all options have been attempted. (Fix: Reduce the number of class links by using placeholder classes instead)
- Verify that all class links are associated with the appropriate sections
Resource Class Sections are not created
- Refer to the Master Schedule Build Report within the scheduling run. This report will show you the order in which resource classes were created based on build priority.
- Based on the reason in the Master Build Report, you will either need to
- Set Staff Contract Rules (System > Staff)
- Resolve a Staff Scheduling Conflict
- Modify the room seat capacity (or leave the room blank in the resource class)
- Change the resource class section number so it does not conflict with an existing class section
Unable to add a Course Section
Check to see if you already have a resource class setup using that section number.
Not all resource classes are appearing in Drag and Drop view when filtering by location restriction
The Scheduling Engine has a hard cap of 250 restrictions users can use for all resources for performance reasons. The number of resource classes with a location restriction should be reduced by the district by removing the restriction type from them, preferably by starting with resource classes that have the restriction type “Selectable” and the location restriction “None”. If there are too many to be manually done by the client, please request Data Team to perform the change. If the restrictions are in fact greater than 250 and is valid, then Dev Team needs to be requested to make the change.
Seat Capacity
Seat Capacity is not being honored
- From the Schedule > Scheduling > Scheduler Setup wizard, check the seat loading factor is not set greater than 100%.
- From Student > Profile > Schedule - check to see if the students were scheduled directly into the sections (not through the sectioner) or if they were pre-scheduled into a section via a special course request.
Special Needs Seat Capacity is not being honored
- From System > Codes - confirm that the appropriate codes are flagged as special needs.
- From Student > Status Summary - confirm that the status assigned to the student was active when the scheduling run was performed.
Builder
Builder didn’t place any resource classes in a particular period
- Periods that do not have any regular sections will have lower common request tallies
- All students within a grade have requested the same singleton for the period
- The period is outside of the default Conditional Period range
Builder assigned resource sections to the Unknown row
- Staff contract information, including periods/day, preps/semester, etc., must be defined
- Departments must be associated with staff records when using the corresponding Scheduler Setup Wizard option
- Teacher assignment must be enabled in the Scheduler Setup Wizard
Builder “bumped” the teacher set in the resource section
Refer to the Drag & Drop interface to see which teachers were removed from a resource section due to a conflict (overlapping periods, conflicting assignments, etc.)