Questions universities ask us

Wise Timetable supports a range of automated import methods. Excel and CSV cover most cases; XML is supported; and there are documented REST API libraries for direct integration with external systems.

Automated import and manual adjustment can be combined at any point, so you keep full control over the final dataset. Many ready-made templates exist, and where your setup is unusual, imports can be tailored precisely to your file format.

You have full control over manual scheduling. Set specific sessions and lock them in place so automatic generation cannot move them. If you have built a substantial part of the timetable by hand, you can lock all of it in a single action.

Locked sessions are marked with a key icon so they are obvious at a glance, and the system generates the remainder around them. This hybrid approach is how most of our institutions actually work.

In rare cases, constraints are strict enough that no complete solution exists even in theory. When that happens, Wise Timetable displays all unallocated sessions clearly rather than failing silently. You then have two options: place the remaining sessions manually into the free slots the system shows you, overriding a constraint where you judge that acceptable; or relax a constraint and re-run generation.

Because even large and complex timetables regenerate in under a minute, iterating is cheap. You will not be starting from scratch.

There are virtually no limits on programmes, sub-programmes, modules, classrooms or lecturers. Technically the only constraint is available memory, and that supports extremely high volumes.

Wise Timetable was originally designed for enterprise-level universities, which is why it scales; it stayed easy enough to use that smaller organisations run it with a single administrator.

Yes, and this is the single biggest time saving most institutions report. You open the web booking system to your teaching staff; each lecturer signs in through a browser and books the hours they are free to teach. No installation, no training, no form to email back.

The administrator watches a live completion dashboard and sends automated reminders to whoever has not responded. Then generation runs directly against that availability from the admin console. There are no phone calls to make, no spreadsheet to reconcile, and no transcription step where errors get introduced — which removes both the delay and the most common source of scheduling error.

Yes. Wise Timetable supports an unlimited number of internal published timetables. Most institutions maintain three: one for the current academic year, one for the upcoming year during the transition period, and one for internal verification and review.

You can also create and save unlimited timetable simulations with different parameters or constraints, stored locally through the administration console, so you can test scenarios without touching the live schedule.

Under a minute for most institutions, including large and complex ones. That number matters less for the waiting than for what it makes possible: when a run is cheap, you can try a constraint, look at the result, and change your mind, which is how a good timetable is actually produced.

How automatic timetable generation works explains what the engine is doing in that minute.

Yes, and it is how most of our institutions work. Lock the sessions that must not move — individually, or all of your hand-built work in one action — and generation fills in around them. Locked sessions carry a key icon so they are obvious.

Unticking a programme protects its lessons as well: they are held aside and put back unchanged rather than deleted.

Yes. The result is reported and nothing is written unless you ask for it to be saved over the current timetable. That is the honest shape of “try it and see”, and it is a tick box rather than a separate mode.

You can also keep unlimited saved simulations with different parameters, so two approaches can be compared on their utilisation and workload figures rather than on impression.

A hard constraint must hold in any valid timetable — a lecturer cannot be in two rooms at once. A soft one is a preference you would like satisfied. Declaring every preference inviolable is the single commonest reason a timetable turns out to have no solution at all.

Hard vs soft constraints works through real examples and how to classify your own rules.

Yes, where students choose their own combinations of modules rather than moving as fixed cohorts. The generator can work from actual enrolments so that no student is given two classes at once.

There are two guides, depending on whether you already have groups: generating a timetable per student and per student with existing groups.

Yes, including the parts that make exam scheduling its own problem: room capacity against cohort size, spacing between a student's papers, and invigilator allocation.

See building an exam timetable and exam invigilation.

Yes. Each lecturer carries their own hourly rates, and the rates can differ by the kind of session — a lecture, a laboratory and a seminar need not be paid the same — or by the study programme. Everyone can be on a different contract, because the rate table holds a line per person.

The report then reads what each lecturer actually taught over a period you choose and works out the money, per programme and per kind of session, as a spreadsheet your accounts department can work from. Paying lecturers from the timetable sets out how it is configured and, just as usefully, what it does not do.

No, and we would rather say so here than in month two. It produces the figures — hours and money, by person, by programme and by kind of session — in a form your payroll or accounts system can take. There is no bank file, no tax calculation, no payslip and no self-service claim form for staff to submit.

A flat one-row-per-session export exists for exactly that handover, where a payroll system would rather read the detail than the summary.

Yes. The web administration prints an evidence-of-academic-work sheet for one lecturer at a time, for a month or any period, split into teaching, consultations, colloquia, exams and other activities, with signature lines for the lecturer and for the office and a heading the faculty writes once and the system then remembers.

Slovenian faculties ask for this one by name — Evalvacija — and it is named that way in Slovenian because that is the word they use in their own reporting.

Three ways, and they are separate on purpose. Before generation, a break can be made mandatory for a group after so many teaching hours and, separately, for a lecturer; a block of teaching can equally be set to run with no break inside it. After generation, Level pauses redistributes what is left.

And you can measure it. The pauses report counts group gaps, lecturer gaps, and how many of the lecturer ones are long rather than short, so “we fixed the gaps” becomes numbers you can compare between two runs. Optimising for lecturers and optimising for groups are separate commands, because they pull against each other.

Yes — hours by lecturer, by department and by programme, with the sessions nobody has been assigned to shown rather than quietly omitted. That last list is usually the useful one.

Balancing lecturer workload is the working guide, and reports for university management covers what a dean actually asks for.

The system runs in any modern browser on any platform — Windows, macOS, Linux and mobile. Dedicated apps are available for Android and iOS so students and staff can reach schedules and booking tools on the move.

The administration console is optimised for Windows PCs, any version, and gives full control over scheduling, reporting and configuration. Backend software runs on Windows Server, whether hosted by us or on your own infrastructure.

Wise Technologies is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022, the international standard for Information Security Management Systems. That means a structured, risk-based approach covering people, processes and technology — not just a firewall.

For cloud-hosted data specifically: sensitive information is encrypted in storage and in transit, backups run regularly, and access controls limit exposure. Where your data governance requires it, we install fully on-premises so data never leaves your own network.

• ISO/IEC 27001 certified Information Security Management System
• Encryption of sensitive information in storage and in transit
• Regular backups against data loss
• Strict access controls limiting exposure
• Full on-premises option for maximum control and compliance flexibility

Every university is assigned a dedicated account manager from our support team. In many regions support is also available locally through trusted partner companies or distributors.

Advanced technical issues and feature requests go to second-line support, handled directly by the core development team — so the hardest problems reach the people who wrote the code. Everything runs through a help desk with a trackable ticketing system for all inquiries.

Support is not an optional add-on. It is a fundamental part of how we sell: every Wise Timetable licence includes it in full.

Yes. Wise Timetable provides ready-made web pages served directly by the application server. Link them from your site or embed them in an iframe and they appear as a seamless part of your own design, including your institution's logo.

For deeper integration, the REST API lets your internal systems read schedule data directly, enabling real-time display, automated reporting and interoperability with the rest of your infrastructure.