Impossible to Place Sections in the Schedule25 Optimizer

What Makes a Location an Acceptable Placement For a Section?

Reducing the number of sections marked "Impossible to Place" is one of the most important parts of making sure a Schedule25 run goes smoothly, so it is vital to understand the factors that make a particular location an acceptable placement for a section. A location is considered acceptable if it meets all the following criteria:

  • It is available for every occurrence of the section (including for any extra finish minutes indicated for the run).
    • Beware of blackouts and holidays–if the section has an occurrence on a holiday but you have a blackout on all your locations for that day, the section can't be placed.
  • Its capacity is sufficient for the section's headcount, but not too large for the minimum fill ratio. (If you're using the legacy TCS Interface, be sure to sum cross-listed enrollment is checked or unchecked, whichever is appropriate.)
  • It has all the location feature requirements of the section (if any).
  • It belongs to a campus partition that satisfies the partition preferences of the section's primary organization.
    • If a section has a specific preferred location, that location is considered acceptable for the section even if it is not within the organization's partition preferences, provided it meets all other criteria.

If there are no acceptable locations for a section, it will be marked Impossible to Place. If there are acceptable locations but they are all assigned to other sections in the same Schedule25 run, the class will be marked Not Placed.

What Locations Are Available For Assignment In a Schedule25 Run?

Schedule25 goes through this process to determine the locations it has available to assign to a section during a run:

  • First it looks at the location search results to know the locations it is allowed to assign.
  • Next, it identifies its primary organization and the organization's partition preferences for each section included in the run and narrows the location search results to just the subset of locations that match one of the partitions in that organization's four partition preference groups.
  • Then, it further narrows the locations based on feature requirements and capacities. 
  • Finally, it eliminates any locations that have conflicts with any of the section dates, either because of preassignments, blackouts, or location closures.

At this point, the original location search results have been narrowed down to a subset of a subset of  a subset, with a final total of X possible locations where the section can be placed.

  • If X = 0, the class is Impossible to Place.
  • If X > 0, the class is either:
    • Given the best fitting location within the highest available partition preference, or
    • Marked as Not Placed because all the possible locations were assigned to other sections.

The 25Live Meeting Pattern Grid

The 25Live Meeting Pattern Grid helps you fine-tune the results from your Schedule25 Optimizer runs to find room for

  • Not Placed - sections not placed because of competition from other sections
  • Impossible to Place - those sections whose preferences or requirements are such that there is no suitable placement in the run

And, you can quickly make location changes to suggested and accepted assignments.

In addition, the Meeting Pattern grid makes it easy to share and collaborate your changes with other users. After finalizing these finishing touches, you can send them back to the Optimizer for final assignment.