1. Getting started
- Create an account with your email and tell us a little about your institution. Confirm your email using the link we send you (check spam if it is slow).
- Open the dashboard. Your first visit loads a small sample school so you can see how everything fits together. When you are ready to start for real, use Clear everything at the bottom of the sidebar, or create a new blank timetable from the timetable switcher at the top of the sidebar.
- Work through the tabs in order. The numbered tabs on the left follow the natural order of the job: Settings, Subjects, Instructors, Class groups, Generate, Print.
Everything you type is saved automatically to your account. The note at the bottom of the sidebar shows All changes saved when it is safe to close the page. On a phone or tablet, open the menu with the button at the top left.
2. Settings: your week
Choose which days the timetable runs (for example Monday to Friday, or Sunday to Thursday), how many sessions there are each day, and how long each session lasts. Every schedule is built on this grid, so it is best to set it first. Changing it later is allowed, but lessons that no longer fit will need to be placed again.
3. Subjects
Add every subject taught at your school, such as Mathematics, English or Physical Education. You will assign subjects to instructors and to classes in the next steps. Subject names can be renamed or removed at any time.
4. Instructors
Add each instructor by name and choose the subjects they can teach. Then click Set availability to open their weekly grid and click the sessions they are not available (part-time days, meetings, other duties). Edsked never schedules an instructor in a blocked session.
5. Class groups
Create each class (called cohort if your institution is a university or college), for example “Grade 7A”. For every subject the class takes, choose:
- the instructor who teaches it,
- the weekly hours needed, and
- the maximum lessons per day of that subject, so a class does not get four maths lessons on the same day.
You can also cross out sessions when a whole class is unavailable. For lessons shared by several classes (a combined PE lesson, for example), create a fused lesson: the classes are taught together by one instructor in the same session.
6. Generate your timetable
Open the Generate tab and press the generate button. Edsked builds a timetable in which no instructor and no class is in two places at once, instructors' blocked sessions are respected, and daily limits are kept. When it finishes it tells you whether every lesson was placed. If some could not be, the list tells you which lessons are left and why, usually because an instructor is overloaded or too many sessions are blocked.
Use Regenerate for a fresh arrangement of the same data. Switch the view between By class and By instructor to check each person's week.
Lock the sessions you like. Click the padlock in any session to lock it (the cell turns gold). When you press Regenerate, locked sessions stay exactly where they are and only the unlocked ones are rearranged around them. A combined lesson is locked for all of its classes at once. Lock all and Unlock all sit under the Regenerate button. To change a locked session by hand, unlock it first. Locking is available on every plan.
7. Fine-tune by hand
Click any slot in the generated timetable to change it. The drop-down only offers choices that are actually possible for that slot: the instructor and the class must both be free and not marked unavailable, and the subject's daily limit must not be exceeded. If you need something that the rules do not allow, change the rule (for example an instructor's availability) and generate again.
On a phone, timetable grids scroll sideways inside their own box. Swipe to see every day.
8. Print or save as PDF
On the Print / PDF tab, tick the classes and instructors you want. Each timetable prints on its own landscape A4 page with a weekly-hours summary underneath. You can add your school name, term and logo so the pages are ready to hand out. Choose Save as PDF in your browser's print window to get a file instead of paper.
The Generate tab can also export your schedule as a file (.json) or as lessons (.csv) that open in Excel and Google Sheets.
9. Library, teams and campuses
Library
Save the instructors and classes you reuse each year, then add them to any timetable with one click. Library items are visible to your team unless you set them to Only me.
Team
Invite colleagues by email. They keep their own login, and your timetables stay private until you choose Share with team from the timetable list. Invite people as editors (can change shared timetables) or viewers (can look, print and export). If two people save at the same time, Edsked asks you which version to keep instead of overwriting silently. The number of collaborators you can invite depends on your plan.
Campuses
On Tier 3 and above you can keep one timetable per campus and share instructors between them. An instructor with the same name at another campus is treated as the same person, so spell the name identically everywhere. Edsked then avoids booking them at two campuses at once and leaves time for travel, using the daily limit and cool-down you set on the Campuses tab.
10. Plans and limits
Every plan includes every feature except multiple campuses (Tier 3 and above). Plans differ in how many classes and instructors one timetable can hold and how many collaborators you can invite.
| Plan | Classes per timetable | Instructors per timetable | Collaborators | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 10 | 10 | 0 | $0 |
| Tier 1 | 25 | 25 | 3 | $500 / year |
| Tier 2 | 50 | 50 | 10 | $1,000 / year |
| Tier 3 | 50+ | unlimited | 25 | $2,000 / year |
The number of timetables and how often you generate are not limited. To upgrade or manage billing, use Upgrade plan or Account & billing in the sidebar. If your timetable goes over a limit after a downgrade, you can still edit it and trim it, but adding more and generating are paused until it fits.
11. Backing up and moving data
Export everything (.json) in the sidebar saves your whole timetable (settings, subjects, instructors, classes and generated schedule) to one file. Import data (.json) loads it again, in this account or another one.
12. Tips and troubleshooting
- Some lessons were not placed. Check that the instructor has enough free sessions for all of their weekly hours, that the daily maximum is not too low, and that the class has enough sessions in the week for everything it needs.
- An instructor appears in two places. This cannot happen within one timetable. Across campuses, check that the name is spelled exactly the same at each one.
- I cannot add more classes or instructors. You have reached your plan's limit. Remove some or upgrade.
- I did not get the confirmation email. Check spam, then use Resend the email on the confirmation screen.
- Everything looks small or cut off. Reload the page. On a phone, grids scroll sideways inside their box.
13. Getting help
Found something that does not work? Inside the dashboard, press Report a bug in the sidebar and tell us what happened. Customers on a paid plan can also press Suggest a feature to tell us what would make Edsked better for them.