Once you have reviewed your courses and registered students and set constraints, it's time to place students into sections. The jmc "Scheduling Aid" is a fantastic feature that automates this process by using student requests, teacher and room availability, and term and period constraints to create the best master schedule. This tool will save you time and the stress of manually scheduling every student.

To use the "Scheduling Aid", log in to jmc Office and go to Schedules > Develop > Scheduling Aid. 

Step One: Select a radio button from the "Timeframe" box to identify the terms included in the scheduling process.

Step Two: Select the grade level range to be included in the schedule by using the "Grade" "From" and "To" drop-down lists.

Helpful Tip: Typically a school would choose all grade levels in a building to schedule all courses at once, eliminating the need to run the process a second time for a different grade range.

Step Three: Place a checkmark in the "AutoMode" checkbox to have jmc automatically identify the best term and period for each section.

Fun Fact: With "AutoMode" selected, the "Scheduling Aid" will only stop to prompt you when additional input is needed such as no teacher assigned, no room assigned, or a teacher is over the load limit.

Helpful Tip: To manually select sections, leave the AutoMode checkbox unchecked and complete steps four through nine for each section.

Step Four: Enter the maximum number of periods the majority of teachers can teach per day in the “Teacher Load Limit” field to receive an alert when a teacher reaches capacity for periods per day.

Step Five: Click the "Begin Processing" button to begin building a master schedule according to the criteria you have identified.

Fun Fact: When the "Scheduling Aid" finds a teacher or room conflict for a section, a pop-up will notify you of the conflict so you can adjust as needed.

Step Six (optional): Click a term/period option in the "Select" box to determine when to offer the current course section.

Fun Fact: The "Select" box is sorted from best to worst by how many potential student conflicts each term/period choice would cause.

Step Seven (optional): Select a teacher for the section from the "Teacher" drop-down list to assign the section to a different teacher if needed.

Step Eight (optional): Select a room for the section from the "Room" drop-down list to assign the section to a different room if needed.

Step Nine: Click the "Next" button to accept your choices and advance to the next course section, click the "Back" button to revisit an earlier section, or click the "Quit" button to discard all section choices and leave the scheduling aid page.

Step Ten: Click the "Done" button to save the changes to your master schedule, click the "Back" button to return to a previous section to make further edits, or click the "Quit" button to return to a previously saved master schedule.

Helpful Tip: Run the "Scheduling Aid" as many times as needed to make the optimal schedule for your school.