Tutorial: Set Up the Bell Schedule

The bell schedule is the shape of the day: how many periods there are, when each starts and ends, and which of them are breaks. Nothing in Timetable works until it exists.

You need: access to Timetable → Configuration.

Steps

1. Open Timetable → Configuration and select the Bell Schedule tab. (The page opens on Import Data.)
2. Select Create Bell Schedule and give it a name. Under the name, tick the grades that follow this schedule — a grade already on another schedule shows which one it is assigned to.
3. Add periods with Add Period. Each period has:
   • a label — pre-filled as P1, P2, … and editable to whatever you call them,
   • a start and end time,
   • a Break switch — turn it on for intervals and lunch. Break periods are still part of the day, but nothing is ever scheduled into them.
4. Watch the Schedule Preview underneath as you go. It draws the day back to you and flags problems — overlapping times, a period that ends before it starts — inline, so fix them here rather than after saving.
5. Mark one schedule as Default. That is the one used for any class that isn't explicitly on another.
6. Select Save Bell Schedule. You should see Bell schedule saved.

More than one schedule

You can keep several — a normal day and a half day, or different shapes for junior and senior sections. Duplicate schedule copies the one you are looking at as a starting point. Exactly one is the default; the rest are selected explicitly. When you generate the timetable the preflight check tells you how many schedules it found.

Deleting

Deleting a schedule is immediate and confirms first. Anything currently placed against it will need re-placing, so prefer editing an existing schedule over deleting and recreating.

What to do next

The rest of Timetable → Configuration can wait until you actually generate:

• Teacher Constraints — when each teacher is available, and their limits (default: max 6 lessons a day, max 3 consecutive, minimum gap 0).
• Subjects & Rules and Subject Groups — how subjects behave, and which run as a set of options at the same time.
• Grade Curriculum and Class Subjects — what each grade and class is taught, and by whom.
• Classrooms — the rooms lessons can be matched to.
• Import Data — bulk-load setup instead of entering it screen by screen.

Next in the chain: Grade Curriculum.