What do you mean by "Scheduling" and "Timetabling"?

"Scheduling" is a broad term that refers to a wide range of processes. For example, rostering, booking appointments, timetabling, planning meetings, and allocating resources, are all forms of scheduling.

"Timetabling" is a particular form of scheduling that involves placing predefined groups of people (or objects) into a predefined set of timeslots according to some set of criteria. Timetabling focuses on the groups to be scheduled.

A good example of this type of scheduling is the school timetable. For example, a school may have classes "Mathematics", "Literature", "Science", "History", "Geography" and these classes need to be scheduled a number of times in the week.

TTMaker solves timetabling problems automatically.

What is "Rostering"?

Rostering is similar to timetabling, but it has a different aim. With rostering, the aim is to fill particular timeslots from one or more pools of resources (usually people). Rostering focuses on the individual people in your schedule.

Rostering usually schedules multiple people into each timeslot.

As an example, suppose you have 10 training courses occuring in 3 venues on a particular day. Suppose you have 50 people who can select 4 courses they want to take. Your aim is to schedule the people into their selected courses sometime during that day of training.

TTMaker provides this type of rostering.

Can TTMaker identify clashes or conflicts in my timetable (where a person is scheduled to be in two places at once)?

When you use TTMaker to automatically build your timetable, there will never be a clash.

This is because TTMaker is specifically designed to prevent clashes when it builds timetables.

Of course, because of the manual control you have with TTMaker, it's possible to create a clash with your manual alterations. If you do this, TTMaker will tell you about the clash so that you can fix.

Once TTMaker has built my timetable, can I manually override part or all of it?

Yes. You can manually create all or part of your timetable before or after you ask TTMaker to do its work.

If you build part of your timetable manually, TTMaker will build the rest automatically.

Even when you create your timetable manually, TTMaker assists you to prevent clashes.

I want people to be able to view my timetable on the web - can TTMaker help?

Yes. TTMaker can export your timetable to standard HTML format. This means it's very easy to add it to your website for people to view with their favourite browser.

I want to send confirmation letters to all the people in my timetable - does TTMaker provide an address label facility?

TTMaker comes with built-in support for generating printed address labels. We've included most standard label types.

My schedule requires some timeslots to be one hour long and some to be 45 minutes - does TTMaker cater for variable length timeslots?

You can create timeslots of any length from 1 minute to 24 hours, and mix them any way you want.

You have complete flexibility when creating timeslots; each day can have its own set of timeslots, and each venue in each day can have unique timeslots too.

You can even have timeslots starting before midnight and ending after midnight.

TTMaker's timeslot are flexible enough for any scheduling application.

The venues for my schedule are quite some distance apart and participants must have time to travel between venues - does TTMaker allow for travel time?

Allowance for travel time between venues is one of the key features of TTMaker.

You simply select the number of minutes to allow for people to travel between venues, and TTMaker builds this into your schedule automatically.

How can I ensure that each group attends each venue at least once per day?

TTMaker has a powerful feature called "rotation". With rotation, you can specify that your groups are to be scheduled at least once in each venue.

You can specify to perform rotation within a day or across the whole timetable.

Will TTMaker work for my school?

School and university timetables have some of the most complex requirements of all scheduling.

TTMaker is designed to be very flexible and is successfully used in many schools and universities around the world.

To determine if it will work for your school or university, we recommend that you download our demonstration version and try it with a small sample of your scheduling problem.

If you would like assistance in answering this question for your school or university, we also provide a free evaluation service. Just with the details of your scheduling problem, and we'll work with you to see if TTMaker is the right solution.

Can I test TTMaker to see if it will work for me?

Yes. You are welcome to download a demonstration version of TTMaker and try it.

Does TTMaker interface with my email?

Probably. TTMaker interfaces with email programs that conform to Microsoft's MAPI specification.

Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and Netscape Communicator all support MAPI and so you will be able to use TTMaker with these email clients.

If you use some other email client, please read the help information for that product or contact the manufacturer to determine if it supports MAPI.

I'm new to scheduling, and I don't know where to start. Can you help?

Absolutely. We aim to provide the best support possible to our customers, and we'll work with you whether you're a veteran scheduler or a novice.

We'll assist you as much as you require to get your schedule completed with TTMaker.

Our training courses will be at specified times, we just need to fill them with the people. Can TTMaker do this?

This is the type of rostering that TTMaker supports.

If you need to do this type of scheduling, you'll be amazed at how simple it is with TTMaker.

I want to schedule people, but TTMaker is designed to schedule groups of people. How can I schedule individual people?

You can give a TTMaker group any name you like. So, if you have to schedule individual people, you simply create groups with those peoples' names.

For example, if you need to schedule "John", "Mary", and "James", simply create TTMaker groups with those names and TTMaker will schedule them.

In fact, using this idea with TTMaker, you can schedule a mixture of groups of people and individual people.