After some years of being in Private Beta, QuickSchools is proud to announce that our Master Scheduler is now available as it’s own standalone product called Orchestra. Check out the website at https://orchestra.quickschools.com/.

Orchestra will maintain the same simplicity and ease-of-use that has been synonymous with the QuickSchools brand. You will find many common elements between the two brands to maintain consistency in the user experience and of course, Orchestra too comes included with our awesome Live Chat support.

Orchestra Master Schedule is available as a standalone to all users who are just looking for a Master Scheduler. For existing subscribers to the QuickSchools SIS, you can add Orchestra as an app via the QuickSchools App Store. This Master Scheduler is available as a premium service for the time being, so please contact our sales/support team for a demo and quotation.

Now to mention some of the key features / characteristics of the Orchestra Master Scheduler:

Collect / Aggregate Course Requests

The Orchestra Master Scheduler uses Course Requests to determine the number of sections to offer for each course. You can use Orchestra to pre-enroll students into Courses by bulk creating Course Requests (based on specific criteria like grade level, english proficiency, or special needs). Or, you can use our Student Portal and allow students to submit course requests online. If you have an SIS that already collects / stores your course requests for you, you can simply import these course requests into Orchestra.

Build a Schedule that works

Once course requests have been collected, you can start adjusting your constraints, including class sizes, and number of sections for each course. Orchestra can automatically assign sections to teachers based on course assignments and constraints. You can also use the drag-and-drop interface to easily move / reassign sections as needed. At the end of this process, you can produce a Schedule Board containing the schedule for each of your teachers.

Assign Students to Sections without conflicts

Once you’ve built your Schedule Board, it’s time to assign students to sections based on their course requests. Orchestra can help you do this easily, while minimizing conflicts. This is an iterative process. You can make adjustments to your Schedule Board and see how that affects the overall schedule for students. You can also create save points, and come back to a version of your schedule that works best for you.

Share your schedule with students and parents

Once your schedule has been built, you can export your schedule to your SIS. You can also directly share completed schedules with students and parents via email, or via an online portal on QuickSchools. We know that parents / students appreciate early access to their schedule, so that they can make adjustments well before school starts. And this can be managed easily online.

Non-Traditional Schedules

It’s important to note that our schedule also works well with non-traditional schedules, where some courses may be offered twice a week, while others are offered 3 or 4 times a week. We can also handle scenarios where students move in cohorts, or we can randomize section assignments so that students are always with a different group of students. We have made various improvements to the Master Scheduler to handle the many ways schools have had to cope with changes to their schedule. And we’re committed to advancing this effort forward.

In summary, if you have a need to more efficiently create a schedule based on course requests, that are free of conflicts, check out our Orchestra Master Scheduler. Give us 30 minutes of your time for a demo, and we’ll show you some magic. Seeing is believing!