aSc TimeTables - Online Help

aSc TimeTables - Online Help

 aSc TimeTables - Online Help

Table of Contents

aSc Substitutions
.......................................................................................................................................................... 1
1 General................................................................................................................................................................ 1
1.1 What is aSc Substitution software good for?............................................................................................ 1
1.2 Substitution PDF manual.......................................................................................................................... 1
2 First steps............................................................................................................................................................ 1
2.1 How to specify a timetable so that the substitution software knows which one we are
using at our school?
........................................................................................................................................ 2
2.2 Inputting absent teachers......................................................................................................................... 3
2.3 Specifying substitutions............................................................................................................................ 3
2.4 Printing the daily and summary substitutions........................................................................................... 4
3 Data entry............................................................................................................................................................ 5
3.1 Defining reasons of absence.................................................................................................................... 5
3.2 Defining types of substitutions.................................................................................................................. 5
3.3 How to specify that Class is missing the whole day................................................................................. 6
3.4 Missing classrooms.................................................................................................................................. 6
3.5 Adding more missings at once
.................................................................................................................. 7
3.6 Teacher details......................................................................................................................................... 8
3.7 Subject details.......................................................................................................................................... 8
3.8 Creating a remark for each substitution.................................................................................................... 9
3.9 Creating a remark for one day................................................................................................................ 10
4 Specifying the substitutions............................................................................................................................... 10
4.1 What is shown in the top right corner?................................................................................................... 10
4.2 Transfer suggestions.............................................................................................................................. 12
4.3 Manually moving/changing the lesson.................................................................................................... 13
4.4 Swapping teachers (A <- B <- C)............................................................................................................ 13
5 Printouts............................................................................................................................................................. 14
5.1 Is it possible to customize text: Unfortunatelly the following teachers.................................................... 15
5.2 Some teachers left the school? How can I remove them from substitutions.......................................... 15
5.3 Printing classrooms................................................................................................................................ 15
5.4 What is "Alternative layout"
..................................................................................................................... 16
5.5 How can I set the width of the lines?...................................................................................................... 16
6 User interface
..................................................................................................................................................... 16
6.1 Is it possible to quick jump to some day in past or future?..................................................................... 17
6.2 How to resize the substitution window?.................................................................................................. 17
7 Settings.............................................................................................................................................................. 17
7.1 Basic settings
.......................................................................................................................................... 17
7.2 Defining substitution criteria
.................................................................................................................... 18
8 Specifying timetable........................................................................................................................................... 18
8.1 How to start a new school year? How to specify a start of the school year?.......................................... 18
8.2 Our timetable has changed during the school year. How to tell it to the substitution
software?...................................................................................................................................................... 19
9 Other tasks
......................................................................................................................................................... 20
9.1 Is it possible to use Substitutions over the network?.............................................................................. 20
 aSc TimeTables - Online Help

9.2 Today is Monday but our school decided to use wednesdays timetable................................................ 20
9.3 Overtime lessons.................................................................................................................................... 21
9.4 Email and SMS notification..................................................................................................................... 21
9.5 Email/SMS history.................................................................................................................................. 23
9.6 Supervision substitutions........................................................................................................................ 24
10 What's new...................................................................................................................................................... 24
10.1 What's new in aSc Substitutions 2007
.................................................................................................. 24
10.2 What's new in aSc Substitutions 2008
.................................................................................................. 25
 aSc TimeTables - Online Help

aSc Substitutions
1 General
1.1 What is aSc Substitution software good for?
aSc Substitutions module is a perfect companion to aSc TimeTables:

Once you create your schedule in aSc Timetables, you can take the resulting timetable and use it to manage your daily
substitutions.

Click here to see all help topics

The PDF version of this manual can be found here:

1.2 Substitution PDF manual

Here is the simplified description of what the software can help you with and how it works:

1. First you specify which timetable is the final one (the one your school is using).

2. Every day you enter which teachers are missing (if any)

3. The software will show you which lessons have a missing teacher and so need to be substituted.

4. For each such a lesson you can specify the teacher that will replace the missing teacher. The software will show you suitable
candidates. These are selected based on many criteria that you can fine tune to suit your needs.

5. Once the substitutions are assigned, you can print daily reports as well as monthly summaries of absences and substitutions.

1.2 Substitution PDF manual

You can download this online substitution help in PDF format:

Several versions are available, the content is the same. Just select the layout that fits you more:

Portrait 1 column
Good for online reading or those who prefer big letters.

Portrait 2 columns
Save some space.
Also good when your printer can print booklets or more pages on one A4. You can also use FinePrint software to print booklets.

Landscape 4 columns
Good when you want to print less pages and do not want to bother with booklets.

You can download also aSc TimeTables help PDF:

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2 First steps
2.1 How to specify a timetable so that the substitution software knows which one we are using at our
school?
After you create a timetable in aSc TimeTables you have to instruct Substitution software so that it knows which timetable you are
using.

Click the bell icon and then plus sign:

Note: if you are adding the first timetable, you will also need to specify a start of the school year.

Then the following dialog displays:

Type a name for your timetable. This name is only information for you.

Click button Select TimeTable and locate your timetable file you have created in aSc TimeTables.

Click OK and you will see your timetable in the list of timetables:

Note: The software also shows you when the timetable is valid. For the first timetable this is always from start of the school year to
the last day of your school year.

See also:
2.2 Inputting absent teachers
or
8.2 Our timetable has changed during the school year. How to tell it to the substitution software?

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2.2 Inputting absent teachers

You can specify the absent teachers, classes or classrooms when you select the first tab in the upper-left part.

This will show you who is missing on that particular day. You can click the plus icon to add a new absentee:

In the dialog you can specify:

Who is absent. Simply write a name or pick an item from the combo box.
Why is he/she absent.
When he/she is absent. This can be whole day or a part of the day. When a teacher is out on lessons 1-3 and 6-9 you have to
input two absent times for him/her.
Long time absence. You can specify a long-term absence in the last part of the dialog.

When you want to remove someone from the absent list simply do it by pressing the minus sign.

You can scroll to yesterday or tomorrow by the blue arrows next to the date. You can also press the right mouse button on the
date and select a day to which you want to jump.

With this icon:

you can transfer those absent yesterday into today absent list.

See also:
2.3 Specifying substitutions

2.3 Specifying substitutions

Click on the second icon at the top and you can define your substitutions for each day:

The left part shows the lessons that has to be substituted.

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1. Click any lesson and the right part will show you candidates to substitution this lesson. Teachers are sorted so the one at the
top position is the best candidate for substitution.

2. Double click on any line in the right part of the screen to select the teacher for the substitution:

3. A dialog appears where you can confirm the substitution:

That's it, you can move to next lesson that has to be solved.

See also:
2.4 Printing the daily and summary substitutions

2.4 Printing the daily and summary substitutions

If you click on the printer icon on the top of the screen you see a list of possible printouts.

You can print:

Today substitutions This information is for teachers. They can see what they have to substitute and you can also keep this
paper to have printed backup of your substitutions.
Today substitutions for students this paper is for students. Actually sometimes it is the most popular paper in the school. A
bunch of students each morning checks which teacher is absent today.

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Summary of substitutions:

Summary of absent teachers the same as previous; it creates a summary of how many times the teacher was absent and for
what reasons. You have an extra option here to count overtime lessons from which the teacher was absent. If you don t use
overtime lessons you can ignore this checkbox.
Export absent and substituting exports the daily absences and substitutions to MS Excel.
Export summaries Export summaries to MS Excel.
Export to HTML

3 Data entry
3.1 Defining reasons of absence
Every time some teacher is absent you can specify why he/she is absent. This is called the reason of absence. The program
can create a monthly summary of who was absent, how many times and what his/her reasons were.

3.2 Defining types of substitutions

Similar to reasons for absence you can specify the types of substitutions. Each time a teacher does a substitution you can classify
this substitution. For types of substitution you can input a name, short name and your comments.

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3.3 How to specify that Class is missing the whole day

You can specify that Class is missing exactly the same way as you specify absent teachers:

Later, when you are doing the substitution, the software will tell you for each lesson that the teachers that were suppose to teach
this absent Class are free and also that they had to have a lesson.

These lessons are displayed by blue color:

See also:
3.4 Missing classrooms

3.4 Missing classrooms

Missing classrooms
Again, the same way is used to add the missing classroom:

Since some action is required when the classrooms is missing(children cannot be in it), the software add new lines into the
substitutions and you have to select a different classrooms for these:

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In the right panel you can see the available classrooms that can be selected for this lesson.
Once you select some classrooms a dialog appears where you can see that you have just changed the room from s106 to s110:

Notes
- the "classroom" lines have different color
- you can still cancel this lesson, move or or change the subject
- at the top there are classrooms this lesson can be in. So it can happen that some occupied rooms are in the list above the free
rooms, because the lesson was not allowed to be in this room in the timetable software during the timetable creation.

3.5 Adding more missings at once

You can add more missing teachers/classrooms and classes at once.

Just press button More in the "Absent" dialog:

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3.6 Teacher details

For each teacher you can define some specific substitution information:

Clicking on the first you can say if the teacher can do substitutions. If the teacher is an external teacher he will not do any
substitutions.

Clicking on the second icon: you can specify if the teacher has to be printed or not.
5.2 Some teachers left the school? How can I remove them from substitutions.

The last icon shows this dialog box:

Red cross "x" Teacher cannot substitute at these specified times.

Duty. You can specify some periods when a teacher is on duty. That means if another teacher is absent at that time, this teacher
is the first one to go to substitute. He/she has to be ready and prepared for emergency substitutions.
Overtime lessons. In some countries teachers can specify which of the lessons are overtime. The program then creates statistics
on how many overtime lessons teacher has taught.

3.7 Subject details

For each subject you can specify if this subject can be joined or not. For example your class 5.A is divided into English and
German and the German teacher is ill then the English teacher can join the whole class and teach them English. But for physical
education you cannot join boys and girls because each group does different activities. So you say that physical education cannot
be joined:

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3.8 Creating a remark for each substitution.

You can create a remark for each substitution. This can be used to let the students and the teachers to know some other
information. For example that subject will be change or they shall wait 10 minutes for the teacher or similiar.

First you have to write down this remark:

Then you have to specify where this note will be printed (by default the remark for substitution is not printed):

See also:
3.9 Creating a remark for one day

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3.9 Creating a remark for one day

You can create a remark for each day where you can specify some more instructions to students and teachers or where you can
write down some very complicated swaps.

First have to write the remark text:

Then you might modify how it is displayed by clicking right mouse button on the remark in the printpreview:

See also:
3.8 Creating a remark for each substitution.

4 Specifying the substitutions

4.1 What is shown in the top right corner?
1. The color of the teachers schedule:

Pink - teacher has a lesson there.

Yellow - this is the lesson to be substituted.
Blue - means the class is missing and the teacher is free, although he was supposed to teach something.
Green - this lesson can be joined with the second half of the class

2. The color bar next to teacher's short names:

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Green - teacher is teaching in this class

Yellow - teacher has the correct approbation
Blue - teacher is the class teacher in this class. He can substitute this lesson and do some very usefull work, like investigate who
broke the window, who damaged the flowers etc :)

3. Timetable of the class.

The upper part shows the timetable of class

You can click on the lessons to change them:

4.2 Transfer suggestions

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4.2 Transfer suggestions

The software can suggest you some moves that are possible and may help you.

The following picture shows that software noticed that you do not need to substitute the 2nd lesson in 7D. Instead you can move
the 5th lesson to 2nd because 5th lesson's teacher has free time:

You can ignore this suggestion and assign any other teacher to substitute the 2nd lesson.

If you decide to accept this suggestion, simply click on the small arrow on the 5th period and select "Suggested moves":

A following dialog appears. As you can see the software suggests to cancel 2nd lesson and move 5th to 2nd.

Press ok to accept this suggestion. Then on the main screen you can see the result:

Notes:
- the "moved" lines have different color
- you can remove the moves by selecting the line and pressing the "minus sign" above the lines

See also:
4.3 Manually moving/changing the lesson

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4.3 Manually moving/changing the lesson

Very similiar to Suggested transfers you can also manually change the lesson.

Right click on the classes or teacher timetable row in the upper right corner and select "Change the lesson".

A dialog appears where you can change subject, move the lesson etc:

See also:
4.2 Transfer suggestions

4.4 Swapping teachers (A <- B <- C)

Lets say teachers A is missing.

You want teacher B to substitute his lesson. However teachers B already has lesson, but this lesson shall be substituted by
teacher C who has free time.

In other words instead of

A <- C

you want

A <- B <- C

How to do this:
1. Input teacher A is missing. Software suggest C can do his lesson:

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2. Instead of selecting teacher C, press RIGHT mouse button on lesson of teacher B. This will allow you to change the lesson of
teacher B. Select that it will be done by teacher C (so that B is free):

3. Now B is free and you can put him to substitute lesson of teacher A:

Note:
- if for any reason you want to change lesson of teacher B, simply click on the line B->C and use the minus sign to delete this
change. It is then reverted back to original status:

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5 Printouts
5.1 Is it possible to customize text: Unfortunatelly the following teachers...
You can write your own text in the settings dialog:

5.2 Some teachers left the school? How can I remove them from substitutions.
The teacher will stay in the database until the end of the school year.

This allows you to print for example the whole year's statistics or print the statistics from September, when this teacher was
teaching at your school.

However you can tell the software not to print some teachers. Please check this picture:

5.3 Printing classrooms

The classrooms can be printed in two ways.

Classroom column
This way is simple and clear. You can add one more column into the substitution reports that shows classrooms:

Class column
If you decide not to use the classroom column, then the classrooms are printed into "Class" column. However they are printed only
if there is a room change or if the lesson is not in the homeclassroom:

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This second aproach can be used to save some space on smaller schools, where the teachers know the homeclassrooms.

5.4 What is "Alternative layout"

aSc Substitution fully allows you to customize the printouts.

Also it allows you to keep two different layouts for the daily printouts for teachers or schools needs:

Besides this there is still one layout for the students.

5.5 How can I set the width of the lines?

Click on the icon Settings in the right bottom. A dialog appears where you can input line widhts:

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6 User interface
6.1 Is it possible to quick jump to some day in past or future?
You can press right mouse button on the date indicator and the popup menu will appear that will jump you to any selected day:

6.2 How to resize the substitution window?

Please press ALT-ENTER or click on the icon in the right bottom of the substitution screen:

7 Settings
7.1 Basic settings
The settings dialog is open via icon in the bottom right corner:

Here you can specify for which days you want to do the substitution. And you may also specify if you want to see on the startup
today or tomorrow substitutions.

Second tab allows you to define weight of each criterion:

7.2 Defining substitution criteria

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7.2 Defining substitution criteria

The settings dialog is open via icon in the bottom right corner. Select second tab in this dialog:

Here is the description for each criterion:

Assign - this criterion is used to ensure that the teachers don t substitute lessons far away from his actual schedule. If e.g. the
teacher is teaching 1st lesson and he goes to substitute 5th lesson. Then (5-1) times the specified number of points is deducted
from his score because he has big window created by this substitution. On the other hand if the substituted lesson is in a window
the teacher receives the amount of points specified.
Teaches the class if the teacher teaches in that class he receives the specified number of points. Sometimes it is handy to
have this teacher do the substitution because he is not a stranger to the class; he knows the students and can even do some work
he didn t have time before.
Class teacher as with the previous criterion, here the class teacher receives the specified number of points so that he can do
administration work with his class.
Approbation teacher receives the specified amount of points if he has the correct approbation
Exhaustion if a teacher is going to substitute this lesson he can have more lessons in one row than specified in the timetabling
program. If this happens the specified number of points is deducted from his total score.
Joining if the teacher teaches the complementary lesson and the subject can be joined the teacher receives the specified
points
Duty if the teacher is on duty at the time of lesson he receives these points.
Equable substitution - the teacher receives the amount of points, that equals to the number of substituting lessons in the last
month multiplied by weight of the criterion.
Max.lessons/day - a teacher can have a maximum number of lessons per day specified. The teacher receives the difference
between this maximum number and the lessons he has on that day multiplied by the specified points. This number can also be
negative if the teacher has more lessons than the max on that day

8 Specifying timetable
8.1 How to start a new school year? How to specify a start of the school year?
Click on the diskette icon and click start a new school year:

Now you have to specify which timetable is valid for this new year. Click the green plus icon in the left top corner. Adding the first
timetable will also ask you when the school year starts at your school:

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Notes:
aSc Substitution is yearly based so it will always initialize to one school year.

If you want to keep last years data you can backup them using the buttons in the same dialog.

8.2 Our timetable has changed during the school year. How to tell it to the substitution software?
Simply add a new timetable to the substitution:

The proces is the same as adding a first timetable.

There are only 2 more options this time:

1. You can specify time from which this new timetable is valid and will be used at your school. You specify only start date. If
you want to have this new timetable valid for one week only, then simply add this new and then add again the previous one, each
with its starting date.

2. Copy the duties and time-off: for each teacher you can specify duties and timeoff in Substitution software. When adding a
new timetable you can say that you want these duties and timeoff are the same as it was before, or that you want to define them
newly. If the new timetable is completely different then it doesn't make sense to keep the previous information, if it is only slightly
changed then you can reuse the previous duties so that you do not need to input them once again.

Click OK and you will see your new timetable in the substitution:

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You can add absences and do the substitutions for any date. However now the software will know for each date, which timetable
shall be used to calculate substitutions.

Notes:
- if you specify new timetable will be valid from 11th November then all the substitutions later then 11th November will be deleted.
The data before 11th November will be untouched.
- After adding the timetable the software will check and may show you some messages. For example it will tell you that the new
timetable has some more teacher's or that some teacher's are missing.

See also:
2.1 How to specify a timetable so that the substitution software knows which one we are using at our school?
5.2 Some teachers left the school? How can I remove them from substitutions.

9 Other tasks
9.1 Is it possible to use Substitutions over the network?
Yes it is.

You can share the c:\timetables folder and run the substitutions from a network drive.
On the other PC you can create shortcut like "G:\timetables\roz.exe -Z1" where G is the network drive.

This allows the substitution to be used from any number of computers using the same database by one user at a time.

9.2 Today is Monday but our school decided to use wednesdays timetable
For each day in the substitution software you can manually change the day in the timetable.

This timetable day is then used to determine what has to be substituted.

Use the small arrows at the bottom of the Today's absences panel:

For example this picture shows that for Monday you are using 3rd day in the timetable file. 3rd day in the timetable file is
Wednesday.

Every time you change this number the program asks if the following days should also be shifted.

You can also specify the cycle that is used in this week if your schedule uses cycles.

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9.3 Overtime lessons

You can mark some lessons in the aSc Substitution as "overtime". The software then calculates how many times the teacher was
missing during these lessons.

Go to teachers section in aSc Substitutions and click the duties column. Then mark which lessons are overtime:

At any time later you can print the summary of absencies. This report can show how many times the teacher was absent during
the lessons marked as overtime:

9.4 Email and SMS notification

aSc Substitutions now allows you to send email or SMS notifications to teachers to let them know what they have to substitute.

1. Setup emails or phone numbers.

Go to section teachers, double click on teacher and fill in the phone or email:

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2. Publish the substitutions.

In section print, press button Publish:

More on publishing the daily substitutions can be found here:

Publishing substitution on EduPage

3. Select who will be notified.

After publishing a webpage is shown. Mark the teachers that you want to send email or sms and press button "Send messages":

4. Sending
While sending a progress is shown where you can see which email or SMS messages were shown:

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After all messages, press button "Show the substitutions". This will bring you to the webpages with your substitutions.

See also:
9.5 Email/SMS history

9.5 Email/SMS history

You can view all emails or SMS messages you have sent from aSc Substitutions.

Go to control panel section Email/SMS history.

A screen with all SMS/Email messages will appear.

For SMS messages you can also see the actual delivery status. You can see if the SMS has already reached the teachers mobile:

See also:
9.4 Email and SMS notification

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9.6 Supervision substitutions

When a teacher is absent and this teacher had some supervisions planned, the software will show a separate line for each
supervision that needs to be substituted.

You can setup a teacher to substitute this supervision in the same way as for normal lesson.

It is also possible to export summary of the supervision. Both absent and substitutited supervisions are provided in total count and
total minutes.

10 What's new
10.1 What's new in aSc Substitutions 2007
Note: these new features were introduced in version 2007.11 on October 11th 2006.
This list is about the substitution software. See also new features in aSc TimeTables:

Absences:
You can now specify that classrooms are missing. The software will then prompt you to do the substitution for this classroom.
3.4 Missing classrooms
It is possible to add more absent teachers/classes/classrooms at once.
3.5 Adding more missings at once

Substitution
The software now suggests that lessons can be moved earlier if the students and teachers can do so.
4.2 Transfer suggestions
You can now modify any lesson. You can change subject, move it to another period, change classroom or teacher. You can also
manually move the lessons.
4.3 Manually moving/changing the lesson
The right panel now automatically shows the timetable for class
4.1 What is shown in the top right corner?

Printing
New column that prints classrooms
5.3 Printing classrooms
New report that allows you to print alternative today's substitution layout
5.4 What is "Alternative layout"

Other small improvements

Double click sorts the lines
Tooltips were added to each lesson in the right panel

See also new features in aSc TimeTables:

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10.2 What's new in aSc Substitutions 2008

Dear users

we are happy to release yet another free upgrade to all our registered customers.

The new version of aSc Substitution software brings three main new features:

1. Supervision substitutions
If teacher is missing, you can also specify who will substitute his/her supervisions.

More details here: 9.6 Supervision substitutions

2. Ability to change any lesson

Clicking on any lesson in the right panel now allows you to change this lesson:

This allows A->B->C exchanges.

3. Email and SMS notification.

It is now possible to publish the substitutions on the internet easily with one button click. This service is hosted by aSc so it doesn't
require any web design knowledge:

Also right after the publishing the software provides you the ability to send email or SMS messages to the teachers to notify them
on the substitutions they have to make.

More details here:

9.4 Email and SMS notification

Note: This functionality is limited in some countries, please feel free to contact us to find more at [email protected]

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