Getting started
How to install Wise Timetable in production
Installing the software is the easy half. Pointing it at your institution’s database used to be the hard half — a Windows data source to register, a connection string to type correctly, and a support call when it went wrong. It is now one button and one key.
- One key, no ODBC data source
- Your existing settings are kept
- Up to three databases at once
- Reconfigured from the server, not the desk
From installer to a working timetable
Five steps, and only one of them needs anything from us.
Install the application
Install from the Microsoft Store, so it updates itself and Windows does not warn about an unknown publisher, or run the installer we supply if your estate does not allow the Store. Administrator rights are not required to run it afterwards.
Leave the old version where it is
If you already run Wise Timetable, do not remove it yet. The two versions stand side by side quite happily, so there is no moment at which nobody in the institution has a working timetable.
Open Settings → Misc → General
This is where the installation is told which database it belongs to. Everything below happens on this one panel.
Press “Set up server” and enter your key
One free-text field. Paste the licence key we issued you, or type the number your institution has used for years — both are accepted, and you do not need to know which kind you are holding.
Open the Data menu
Your databases are already there, in the order they were licensed, tested and ready. Nothing else has to be configured before you start work.
What the key actually does
It is a lookup, not a licence check with a database form behind it.
When you press Set up server, the application asks our registration server what that key entitles you to. It receives up to three database connections — the ones your institution is licensed for — and then, before it writes anything at all, it opens each of them and proves the connection works.
Only if that succeeds does it save the settings, and the file it replaces is kept beside the new one as a backup. A key typed into the wrong installation, or entered while the network is misbehaving, therefore leaves a working installation exactly as it was. There is no half-configured state to recover from.
The dialog then names the customer and lists the databases it has just set up. That is deliberate: a wrong key is obvious in the second you press OK, rather than an hour later when somebody notices they have been editing last year’s data.
- No Windows ODBC data source to create — there has not been one since the current version
- No connection string, server name, port or password to type
- Every connection tested before anything is saved
- The previous configuration kept as a backup file automatically
- The databases appear on the Data menu in their licensed order
If you already run Wise Timetable, your old number still works
Nothing your institution was issued in the past has been invalidated.
Older installations were configured with a short number rather than a key. Those numbers were carried across when the mechanism changed, so the same field accepts either. Type what you have. If your predecessor left the number on a sticky note and nobody knows what it is, we can look it up from your institution’s name in a minute.
An installation that is already working does not need to be reconfigured at all. Upgrading reads the settings that are already on the machine and carries on with them — Set up server is for a new machine, a rebuilt one, or a change to what you are licensed for. The one thing an upgrade does silently is bring old stored credentials up to the current protection; that needs nothing from you.
This is also why reinstalling Windows is no longer an event. The old mechanism burned a number each time it was used, so a rebuilt PC meant a support call and a new one. The key is not consumed. Use it on the rebuilt machine and on the next one.
Three databases, three menu slots
Most institutions run one live database, and many run a second for next year’s planning or a third for a faculty that has not been merged in yet. A licence carries up to three at once, and each is offered as its own entry on the Data menu, so switching between them is a menu choice rather than a reconfiguration.
Institutions that own more databases than that are not stuck: which three appear is set on our side and can be changed whenever you ask, without anybody visiting a workstation.
Configured from the server, not from the desk
The key is typed once. After that, every launch re-reads the configuration.
This is the part that matters if you run a large estate. Once a machine is registered, it asks the server what its settings should be every time it starts. Moving a database to a new server, rotating a password, adding a faculty’s database or changing which three appear on the menu is a change on our side and a restart on theirs. No new key, no visit, no email telling forty people to retype something.
Each installation registers itself individually, under an identifier the application generates rather than the computer’s name — names change, repeat across domains, and are identical on every machine cloned from one image. So a single institutional key can run on as many workstations as you like while each of them remains visible, and revocable, on its own.
Stored connection details are encrypted with the Windows data protection service and bound to the machine that holds them, so a copied settings file is of no use anywhere else. More on how we handle security.
What happens when the registration server cannot be reached
It starts normally, with the settings it already has.
That is a deliberate design rule rather than a happy accident: no machine is ever prevented from opening a timetable because a server somewhere else is down, a network is being maintained, or a laptop is off campus. A refresh that fails is written to the log and the existing configuration is kept. The only thing you cannot do offline is set up a machine for the first time.
Questions administrators ask
Do we need to open a port to you, or install an agent?
No agent, and nothing listens on your network. The application makes an outbound connection when it starts and when a key is entered. Institutions that host the database themselves keep it entirely inside their own network; institutions we host reach it the same way they always have.
If your firewall restricts outbound traffic, say so before you start and we will send you the exact host and port to allow, so the first machine works first time rather than after a ticket.
Can we test the new version against a copy of our data first?
Yes, and we would encourage it. Tell us before you start and we will set a test database up as one of your slots, so it appears on the Data menu next to the live one and nobody can confuse the two.
What if we enter the key on the wrong machine?
Nothing breaks. Each installation is registered separately, so one can be revoked without touching any of the others, and the settings it replaced are still on that machine as a backup file.
Does every workstation need the key?
Each one needs it entered once, the first time. After that it configures itself at every launch. If you deploy from an image, the identifier is generated per machine rather than copied, so cloned installations do not collide.
Do we have to remove the old version before installing the new one?
No, and you should not. Install the new one, open your database with it, and uninstall the old one only once you are satisfied. There is no window in which the institution is without a working timetable.
Who does this if we do not have anyone free?
We do, over a screen share, in about fifteen minutes. It is included in your licence and there is nothing to pay for it.
Related capabilities
- Importing your dataOnce the database is connected, this is the next thing you will do.
- Cloud hosting and on-premisesWhere the database itself lives, and who looks after it.
- Security and ISO 27001How credentials, data and access are handled.
- DocumentationThe published manuals, including the 112-page import reference.
See Wise Timetable on your own data
Book a 45-minute online presentation. We will walk through your institution's scheduling problem, show how Wise Timetable handles it, and answer anything your team wants to test.