Last Update:
October 2010 Release 7.4
Activities: Sandbox 足 Room Optimization This lesson is specifically designed for users responsible for academic room assignments in the Astra Schedule sys足 tem.
Astra Schedule VII 足 Training Manual Document by: Terry L. Saye Training Developer
Ad Astra Information Systems, LLC. 6900 W. 80th Street, Suite 300 Overland Park, KS 66204 www.aais.com
Table of Contents
Lesson Objectives
3
Common Practices
3
Best Practices
3
Concept Introduction
3
Area Overview
4
Global Preferences
5
The Optimizer
11
Exercise Solutions
15
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Provide an overall understanding of the preference settings that guide manual and optimized scheduling. Provide instruction on setting scheduling priorities and using the Astra Schedule optimizer. Instruct users on troubleshoot sections that do not received automated room assignments. Explain optimizer results and the accompanying reports for schedule analysis and space management/policy improvement.
Common Practices
· Roll forward of offerings and room assignments from previous terms · Dual entry and errors due to SIS system / Scheduling incompatibility · “Grandfathered” use of room resources resulting in over/under usage of space
Using the room optimization tool available in Astra Schedule will allow academic schedulers to not only automate room assignments and reduce both time and manual tasks but give them access to the information they need to make key scheduling decisions to improve space utilization and enforce scheduling policies.
Concept Introduction
Lesson Objectives
Best Practices
Sandboxes in version VII of Astra Schedule may be used to automate and optimize section and exam room assignments, academic section timetabling, faculty timetabling, and section creation. These tools may also be used to create scheduling scenarios for proactive schedule management.
Room optimization is based on grouping like meeting patterns together and solving the largest (most meetings) scheduling problem first. Rooms are then scored for each section meeting based on seat fill and desired preferences. Assignments are determined based on the number of rooms available to the section and by the calculated room score. Reports at the end of a room optimization run will provide detail information on meeting patterns, bottleneck situations, and preference conflicts. Sectioning, timetabling, and faculty assignment optimization tools are available through the Astra Schedule Suite and provide similar opportunities for automation and optimization of scheduling resources. Each of these features are covered in more detail in the specific feature lesson.
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Notes:
In this lesson we will cover global preference setting which allows users to enter in scheduling rules that remain in the system for use term after term. We will also cover best practices in global settings and in room optimization.
Area Overview
Vocabulary Terms: Preference: The consideration of a given room type, feature, region, building, or room as determined by course or instructor need. Preference Mode: The preference mode determines how the preference is applied during scheduling. The four preference modes include: 1. Normal preference weight is considered when scoring room fit 2. Required preference must be satisfied in room assignment 3. Excluded preference item must be avoided in room assignment 4. Blocked preference should not be considered if it has been inherited from another rule Preference Set: A reusable group of saved scheduling preferences (business rules) ap plied during room assignment to determine “best fit” based on the scheduling process, term, or scheduling goals. Score: A numeric representation of a room’s suitability for scheduling, based on sched uling preferences and seat fill. Score is used to suggest room assignments during manual scheduling and to make room assignment during optimization. Suitability: Suitability determines whether or not a room is appropriate for a course sec tion. Suitability takes into consideration campus, number of seats, and whether or not the room satisfies any required preferences. Scheduling Priorities: An optimizer setting that specifies the balance between subjective (preference priority) and objective (seat fill priority) scheduling. Bottleneck: A scheduling deficit caused by a scarce resource or heavily used time pe riod. A bottleneck is indicated when suitable rooms exist, but none are available for a given section. Infeasible: A section which has no suitable rooms due to a combination of scheduling requirements that are impossible to meet. Publish: The process of updating the production section data with room assignments made during an optimization run. Sandbox: The Sandbox is an academic scheduling area where scheduling scenarios can be created to model configuration options and changes to processes.
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Global Preferences
The academic scheduling process in Astra Schedule begins with a careful analysis of the objectives and goals of scheduling. Creating preferences that take into account these goals, is paramount to getting the most out of Astra Schedule.
Academic room scheduling preferences allow you to require, exclude or specify a weighted preference for room types, features, regions, buildings or even specific rooms for each subject, course, meeting type, and instructor. These settings may then be applied to all corresponding section meetings during room assignment. How do global preferences affect section scheduling? Global preferences levels may be combined as necessary when creat ing scheduling rules to best fit the needs of the institution. Some exam ples of this are below: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Meeting type (ie. All lectures prefer a room type of “classroom”) Meeting type/Subject (ie. All biology labs prefer a room type of “bio lab”) Subject (ie. All accounting sections prefer the “business” region) Course/Meeting type (ie. Art 101 Lab needs a “sculpting lab” while Art 106 lab prefers a “classroom” with “easel” features) Instructor (ie. Kelly Douglas requests rooms with a feature of “overhead projector” when instructing)
Preferences are then referenced by sections during scheduling are applied as defined by the scheduling rules and used by the system to determine the “best fit” room. Meeting Type: Lecture Room type: Classroom Course: Acct. 101 Feature: Whiteboard
With the global preferences shown here on the left, the best fit room for Accounting 101 lecture sections will be a classroom in the business region with a whiteboard and the appropriate seat count.
Subject: Acct Region: Business
In order to allow variation in scheduling practices, these business rules are created in Preference Sets which can be selected when utilizing the system scheduling tools. Example: Fall Set: Maximizes space utilization and focuses on course vs. seat fill needs. Summer Set: Restricts campus space with regional or building preferences in order to save on cooling costs.
Notes:
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Notes: Creating a Preference Set To create a new room scheduling preference set: To create a new Preference Set: 1. Select the Scheduling Preference Sets link located in the Academics Admin area of the Academics tab. 2. Click the New Preference Set button. 3. Select Room Preference Set. 4. Enter a Name for the set. 5. Optionally enter a Description. 6. Use the Add Rule button to add preference rules. 7. Click Save when the preference set is complete.
Entering Preference Rules Global preference rules should be well thought out based on desired results. Creating preferences at the most generic levels first and then adding rules to specific exceptions will save data entry efforts and minimize the number of rules required. Rules are applied in the order listed with override capabilities to allow for special circumstances.
Examples: Level Order Meeting Type / Meeting Type Subject: Room type is a good example of prefer ences that should be set at the meeting type or meeting type + subject level. All lecture sections will generally use the same room type of “classroom” or “lecture hall”. All Biology lab sections will need a “Biology lab”. Subject: Building and region are often used at the subject level. If scheduling is han dled based on room ownership or if regions have been created based on scheduling rights, a rule may be created to drive all sections of a subject(s) into the appropriate area. An example of this would be that all “Acct” subject sections require a room in the “Business” scheduling region. Course / Course Meeting Type: At an even more specific level, instructional needs should be considered at the course and course + meeting type level, such as “World Maps” for Geography lectures. Additional possibilities include instructor needs as well as rules created using any mix ture of the 5 possible criteria settings (Campus, Meeting Type, Subject, Course, Instruc tor).
Page 7 Upon click of the Add Rule button, the New Rule form appears for editing. 1. 2.
Users will add the rule Criteria in the left column on the form. Select the desired preference type by clicking on the tab at the top of the form. Combine criteria for proper rule creation.
3. 4.
Select one or multiple items.
In the Name column choose an item from the drop足down list. Choose a weight between 1 and 10 where 10 is the most desirable. Weigh preferences based on desirability.
Use the tabs to select preference type.
Select item(s).
Set rule mode.
Notes:
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Notes:
5.
6.
Select a rule mode. Rule mode tells the system if an item is required, excluded, blocked, or is handled as a normal weighted preference during scheduling. Click OK when the rule is complete.
As rules are created and added to a preference set, the set may be managed using the Preference Rules grid. Once all of the generic level rules have been created, user may define more specific rules for additional preferences based on course or instructor need. Change the rule priority using the arrow icon.
Expand the fields to view all items.
Edit or delete previously created preference rules.
Rule 1 states all lecture sections must go in one of three possible room types which have been weighted by desirability.
Rule 4 states business sections should be scheduled into the Business re足 gion based on subject code. Meeting type rules will also apply.
Page 9 Use the override option to replace previously placed preferences. Perhaps a rule has been created to put all lectures in a particular room type. To change this for a particular course or set of courses, create a new rule using override.
Remember to save any changes to the preference set before exiting. A default preference set is associated with every academic term. These will be visible at the section level. Users may select any preference set when optimizing or time tabling.
Testing Preference Settings To see how the preferences rules of a set will affect a specific section use the Tester tab. To use the Tester: 1. Select the Scheduling Preference Sets link located in the Academics Admin area of the Academics tab. 2. Open the desired preference set by clicking on the Name link. 3. Click the Tester tab. 4. Enter the section information. 5. Click Test.
Notes:
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Notes:
In the test tool, all possible preferences will appear in the result screen with the mode. When viewing academic preferences at the section record level, it is important to remember the following:
· · ·
Global preferences viewed at the section level will be inherited from the preference set associ ated with term. Section preferences viewed in the optimizer sandbox are inherited from the preference set selected during optimization. When selecting preferences, notice that long lists will be paged for quicker loading. Use the grid tools at the bot tom of the box to view addi tional pages.
Vocabulary Terms: Normal: Preference is considered during room assignment based on the weight setting. Required: Preference must be met by room assignment or remain unscheduled. Exclude: Preference must avoided when determining room assignment. Blocked: Preference will not be considered during room assignment.
Exercise #1 Create a preference set for a selected subject utilizing subject, course/ meeting type preferences. Include the subject in the naming conven tion of the preference set.
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The Optimizer
Once preference sets have been created. The academic scheduler may use the Optimizer to make building and room assignments. With refined business rules and processes this tool can not only save valuable time for the scheduling staff but, optimize campus space utilization and highlight trouble areas in current meeting patterns and preference use.
The Sandboxes link is located in the Academics tab. Clicking on this link opens the Sandbox List, which displays any saved optimizer runs. Depending on licensing, institutions may have sandbox files for room assignment, time tabling, and section creation. For this lesson, we will be working on room assignment. The Status field of each run will display one of the following activity statuses: · Scheduled The optimizer run is scheduled to run at a later time. · Running The optimizer run is currently generating results. · Completed The optimizer run is finished and results are available for review. · Published The optimizer run results were published to the production section file.
Creating a sandbox file To create a new Sandbox file: 1. Click the Add button. 2. Select Room Optimization. 3. Select the appropriate parameters for the optimization. Select desired preference set.
Based on production data or a previous run.
4. Filter the data to be optimized. 5. Set the Scheduling Priorities. (Room assignments are made based on subjective and objective scheduling criteria. During optimization the user
Notes:
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Notes:
Filter the data to be optimized.
may determine the importance given to preferences based on the preference type.) 6. Choose the PreÂProcess Settings for the run. 7. Click the Save button to save your settings and start the optimization process. 8. When the run is complete, the Results page becomes available. Select preprocessing options.
Minimum seat fill required to book room. Placing more emphasis on Seat Fill will produce a schedule that prioritizes better enrollment to seat ratio over preference attainment.
Viewing Optimizer Results The Optimizer Results page provides a statistical summary as well as detailed information about those sections that were scheduled and those that were not. The Reports page is broken down into the following five tabs: ¡ Scheduled  This tab provides a list of the sections assigned rooms by the optimizer run. Clicking on the section will allow the user to view and edit section details including room assignment. This list view may be managed using the filter and grid options available to the left and bottom of the report grid.
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Meeting Pattern At the bottom of this report tab is a report of the scheduled sections by meeting pattern for standard time and scheduling grid comparison.
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BottleNeck Sections This tab provides a list of sections that were unable to be assigned to a room due to conflicts. In other words, more sections want certain rooms at the same time than are available. These sections may be expanded to view the possible rooms for each and the sections that took the room assignment. BottleNeck Rooms This tab displays a list of all rooms that had sections denied due to bottlenecks. Clicking on the room will show all sections that have been assigned to the room in order to view utilization times and overall usage.
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Infeasible sections This tab displays a list of sections for which there were no suitable rooms found in the system. Requirement information is located in the grid and additional information can be found by clicking on the information icon. No rooms met all of the requirements for the section.
Notes:
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Notes:
When the user is satisfied with the optimizer results they may update the production data set with the new room assignments. 102 rooms meet the capacity requirements for this section.
Only 2 rooms meet the room type requirements.
Only 7 rooms meet the seat fill requirements on this run.
Publishing an Optimization Run To publish room assignments back to production data, click on the Prepare to Publish button. The system will then check the optimizer assignments against the production section file for possible issues. These issues may include: · Changes to production room assignments or events that have created conflicts since the optimizer run. · Changes to production room controls or other blocks (i.e. holidays) that impact room scheduling. If issues exist, a list of the involved sections will appear with the following options (based on the user’s security settings): · Cancel the publish attempt. · Override the controls or conflicts and publish the results. · Publish without including the conflicting section assignments.
Exercise #1 Create an optimizer run on production, utilizing a previously created preference set and view the results.
Exercise #2 Create an optimizer run based on the sandbox file created in Exercise #1. Maintain room assignments and lower minimum seatfill.
Page 15 Exercise #1 Create an optimizer run on production, utilizing a previously created preference set and view the results.
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Click on the Academics tab. Select the Sandboxes link. Click the New button. Choose Room Optimization. Enter a Name. Select the correct Preference Set. Choose Production Data. Select a term(s). Filter the data for optimization to the desired subject. Set priorities and preprocess settings. Click the Save button. Review the optimized results.
Exercise Solutions
Exercise #2 Create an optimizer run based on the sandbox file created in Exercise #1. Maintain room assignments and lower minimum seatfill.
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Click on the Academics tab. Select the Sandboxes link. Click the New button. Choose Room Optimization. Enter a Name. Select the correct Preference Set. Choose Sandbox file. Check the box to Keep Existing Room Assignments. Set priorities and preprocess settings. Lower the Minimum Seat Fill value. Click the Save button. Review the optimized results.
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