Setting up the school timetable in HexerSMS

When a timetable lives on a wall chart, one change means rewriting it and telling everyone it affects. In HexerSMS, the school management system we're building for Ghanaian schools, the office enters each lesson once, and every teacher and pupil sees their own version on their phone.

HexerSMS is still in development. Here's how the timetable works.

Who sets it up

The school office does. Teachers and pupils can see the timetable, but they can't change it.

Adding a lesson

Open Timetable, pick a class and tap Add lesson. Each lesson has:

• A day, from Monday to Friday
• The time it starts and ends
• The subject
• The teacher
• A room, if you want to name one

On a computer, the office sees the class's whole week as a grid. On a phone, it's one day at a time. Any lesson can be edited or deleted from its menu. A lesson's day stays fixed once it's created, so to move one to another day, delete it and add it again.

Clashes it refuses

HexerSMS checks each lesson when it's added or edited, and stops you if it clashes:

• A teacher in two places. "Teacher already scheduled for JHS 2 at this time."
• A class with two lessons at once. "Class already has Mathematics scheduled at this time."
• Times that don't work. "End time must be after start time."

Lessons that only partly overlap count as clashes too, not just ones that start at the same time.

Rooms aren't checked. The same room can be put down for two classes at once, so the office needs to watch for that itself.

What teachers see

Each teacher sees their own lessons across all their classes, with the number of periods they have in a week. Each lesson shows the subject, the class and the room.

On a phone, the timetable opens on today, with the lesson on now marked Now and the one after it marked Next. On a bigger screen, today's lessons run along the top with the whole week below. Today's lessons are on the teacher's overview page as well.

What pupils and parents see

The pupil's portal has My timetable, with the same layout. Each lesson shows the subject, the teacher and the room. There's more on what families see in the portal.

A new timetable each term

A timetable belongs to one term, so each term starts empty, and the office enters that term's lessons. There's no way to copy last term's across yet.

Until the new one is in, nobody is left with a blank page. Teachers see last term's lessons with the note "This term's timetable isn't in yet". Pupils see them too, with a note that lessons may change when the new one is out.

The current term has to be set before lessons can be added. Here's how terms and the school year work.

Where it stands

HexerSMS isn't open to schools yet. If you run a nursery, primary or JHS school and want early access, email us at info@hexerize.com, or look around the preview.