Ignoring cards to use automatic timetable generator
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.