Tips

The following tips are for CELCAT Timetabler 7.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Press F1 from any window to get Help.

Use Ctrl-F6 to switch between windows in the CELCAT Timetabler Client desktop.

Pressing F3 in the browse window changes the search criteria target (Unique name, Name, Department).

Press F5 to refresh a record window

Pressing Escape closes most windows within CELCAT Timetabler.

Press Ctrl-Tab in record windows to jump from one topic tab to another.

Press any digit key in a timetable grid window to display the viewing weeks dialog, where you can make a selection of weeks to display.

Press Ctrl-B for the browse window within record windows.

Use Ctrl-F, P, N and L for the first, previous, next and last records respectively.

Events and the Timetable Grid

Right-click on the event selector to display list of events for that cell. You can make a selection from there.

If the timetable grid window is open, press any digit key to display the 'viewing weeks' dialog, from which you can select the weeks to view in the grid. For example, if you want to view weeks 1-10, just type 1-10 and press RETURN.

If a timetable grid cell has more than one event in it but these events do not overlap, press Ctrl and right-click on the cell to display a list of events in that cell. Alternatively, you can click on the individual events to select them.

When dragging events in a timetable grid, press the Ctrl key to copy an event rather than move it.

If there is more than one event in a timetable grid cell, use the standard navigation buttons (and keyboard shortcuts) to navigate between the events when the event window has focus. Alternatively, use the + and - keys on your keyboard to navigate between the events. This will work in both the timetable grid and the event window.

To change the weeks that individual resources are assigned within an event, click on the item in the resource management window and use the bar at the top of the window. Alternatively, with the resource selected, click on the segments button and use the bar at the bottom of the resulting window. You can also choose common week segments - week patterns that other resources in this event use - from this window.

The room requirements tab within the event window allows you to set up the fixtures, capacity and layouts that a room for an event should have. You can use this when searching for a suitable room using the rooms adviser.

To view the timetables of your departmental staff: Open a staff timetable grid. Open the browse window, F3 to select the department column to search by, type a search string to select the required department - this will filter the list to just the staff of your department - then use the up and down arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate the list of staff. Each move to a different member of staff will cause their timetable to be displayed in the grid. This does depend on a setting of browse update in Options | Records.

Suppose a restricted timetabler needs a room to be allocated to an event, but does not have sufficient access rights to do it, yet a colleague does. The restricted user needs to communicate the event detail to the colleague so that he can allocate a room. Ordinarily, this would be difficult to describe. To make it easy, the restricted user could simply email the event ID to his colleague. The colleague can then use Tools menu | Go to Event, in order to open the event. This does depend on a setting of Show internal ID in Options | Records.

Press 'C' in a timetable grid to display a calendar. When a date is selected, CELCAT Timetabler changes the weeks view to a single week and moves the cursor to the appropriate day.

Undo

Double-click on the CELCAT Timetabler Client background to open the undo window. Double-click on the background to close it, or choose Edit | Undo window to toggle its display.

Add markers in your undo list at appropriate points in order to segment large changes. You can then undo up to a certain point.

You can rename markers in the undo list. Simply right-click a marker and select the Markers | Rename command.

Statistics

Right-click on a statistics chart to change the analysis type (By day, period or week).

Hover over a bar in a statistics chart to see the precise number of hours displayed, as well as the number of events relevant to that bar.

If you copy a statistics chart to the clipboard using Statistics | Chart to Clipboard, pasting it into another application (such as Notepad or Excel) will give you the statistics as text. However, if you paste into an image application or into an application that allows you to specify the format that is being pasted in (such as Microsoft Word* through Edit | Paste Special...), you can paste the chart as an image.

*Microsoft Word is a trademark of the Microsoft Corporation.

Advisers

Selecting more than one event within an event store allows you to run the adviser on these events. This allows you to find recommendations for and make modifications to multiple events in one operation.

Record Windows

Click on the username displayed in the audit panel to show a contact email address for that user.

Set the pages that you wish to open by default in Tools | Options | View. You can assign it to always open a timetable view, for example.

Press Ctrl-B for the browse window within record windows.

Use Ctrl-F, P, N and L for the first, previous, next and last records respectively.

If you have been denied access to records etc, the Browse button shows those items you do have access to.

Usage Charts

Right-click on the usage chart and choose 'Show Events' to see the usage for a resource and the relevant events.

Within the usage chart in 'Show events' mode, double-click on an event to open the event. You can edit events directly from there.

Double-clicking on the resource's name will open the record for that resource.

Double-clicking on a period for a resource when in 'battleships' mode will open that resource's timetable. ('Battleship' mode is an affectionate reference to the usage chart when not displaying event information).

If you would like to check the availability of several rooms on each day of the week, this is most easily achieved as follows: Open a room usage chart and filter to your selection of rooms. Select a day from the drop-down list and leave the focus in the combo-box. Then use the mouse-wheel to navigate the days; or using the keyboard, type the first letter of a day to navigate directly.

Printing

For a print preview that has multiple pages, use the navigation buttons at the top of the window to navigate pages. These have the same keyboard shortcuts as the ordinary navigation buttons.

You can use the scroll-wheel on your mouse to scroll through pages on a print preview.

Ctrl-Scroll-wheel will zoom on the preview. Alternatively, use the left and right mouse buttons to zoom in or out respectively.

To conserve paper usage when printing timetable grids, try checking the 'Times (conditional)' checkbox found on the Misc. tab of the Setup window for Grid printouts. This will only print the event times if they are not obvious from the grid headings.

Access Rights

Double-click on the role name in the status bar of CELCAT Timetabler Client to switch to another role.

For fixed and preferred resources, click on the bottom half of the little buttons that sit at the top of the record window to display preferred resources. Click on the top half to display fixed resources.

If you have been denied access to certain records and wish to go to the first item that you can view, use the items from the navigation sub-menu (found under the record, timetable or statistics menus). Shift-Ctrl-F, for example, will take you to the first item that you can view. Alternatively, press Shift when clicking on the navigation buttons to do this.

When using the 'By Type' view for roles in CELCAT Timetabler Administrator, right click to display a menu that enables quick setting of access rules for all resource types. For example, choosing 'Set all types to Deny' will add deny rules for all resources.

When setting up role definitions within CELCAT Timetabler Administrator, right-clickon the list on the 'By Type' page for a menu that allows you to change all items at once.

Weeks

To use week schemes within CELCAT Timetabler Client, choose a week scheme from Tools | Options | Preferences.

CELCAT Timetabler Attendance

All registers of an event may now be selected simply by using a '*' wildcard to indicate all weeks of the event. E.g. Entering register ID '45612' means event ID 456, week 12, or entering register ID '456*' means event ID 456, all weeks. This may be useful where you want to quickly select all registers for a single event to combine them onto a single page for printing, ready for a term's worth of marking or review.

An attendance mark which is of definition 'Undefined' in excluded from statistics. So if you want to be able to mark a student as 'not required to attend this week only' in a single register of an event, the register for that week will not count towards the students' attendance percentage either positively or negatively. Similarly if a register does not take place (e.g. coincides with a national holiday) the register can simply be block-marked with this special mark type, and no students or staff will be penalised for non-attendance, or for not filling in the register.

Miscellaneous

If you use the drop down menu on the File | Open button, the name of the database, timetable and the machine that it is hosted on is shown in the status bar. This can be quite useful if you need to distinguish between multiple timetables with the same name.

In the File | Open Dialog, use the drop down button on the menu at the top to change the view style of the timetable list.

When installing a server based client install you may not be able to display the on-line Help files. Apply a MS security update (KB896358), which restricts HTML files from being displayed when run off network location or intranet.

Add the following string to the client.reg file and restart the PC (where "P:" is an example of the CELCAT Timetabler Client program files folder location).

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\HTMLHelp\1.x\ItssRestrictions]
"UrlAllowList"="P:\\Software\\Celcat\\celcat6\\ctclient.chm;file://;"