Switching to nOS

What building it by hand costs you

It takes more than a hundred hours, and it usually falls on one person.

That’s the finding of a Columbia study, which calls that person the “lone programmer”. When they’re out, nobody else knows how the schedule was made, and when time runs out, the requests left unfilled are the ones nobody got to.

Center for Public Research and Leadership, Columbia University, About Time: Master Scheduling and Equity, 2021.

100+hours to build one schedule by hand

1person who knows how it was made

Where you’re starting from

A spreadsheet

It can hold a schedule, but it can’t search for one or tell you that a change you just made broke a student’s day on another tab. In one field audit, 94 percent of working spreadsheets had errors.

Panko, What We Know About Spreadsheet Errors.

Paper or a board

It’s a good way to think, and you can see the whole schedule and move a piece back. But it keeps no record of why, can’t check a student’s day, and lives in one room.

The scheduler in your student information system

Keep it. It stays the record for enrollment, grades and attendance, and nOS hands the schedule back to it. Its scheduling module is often the oldest part, and it rarely explains why a request missed.

Compared with a legacy scheduler

	A legacy scheduler	nOS
Time to a first schedule	Days to weeks, often with a consultant.	Hours, mostly checking your own data.
How rules are written	Codes, flags and constraint tables.	Sentences, in 80 kinds, as musts or preferences.
What you learn about a miss	That it missed.	One of twelve reasons, in plain words.
The most any schedule could fill	Not answered.	A provable ceiling, before the build.
What changes without your approval	Varies. Some write straight to the live system.	Nothing. Every change is staged, every send is previewed.
Price	Quoted per district, plus setup and training.	Under $10 per enrolled student per year. No setup fee.
What it takes to leave	Depends on the contract.	Export everything as CSV, Excel or PDF, and stop.

When to start

Try it this fall, so you’re ready when requests close.

Most schools collect course requests in the winter and build the schedule in the spring. Try nOS on this year’s data in the fall, and the build can start the day the requests are in.

Try it on this year’s dataThree days free, on your own school

Course requests come inFrom your system, a file, or the student form

Build, fix and reviewHours for the build, days for the review

Send it backThen the summer changes

Now

What happens when you start

You sign up, bring your data in, and spend most of the time checking it.

You create the accountInvite colleagues by email from Settings. There’s nothing to install; it runs in a browser.

Your data goes inConnect your student information system, or upload the spreadsheet you already keep.

You clean the workbooknOS shows what it read and marks what will cause trouble on the cell, with its fix. Most schools find a few problems here.

You build, read and fixWrite your rules, build, then work down the list of what missed and why.

You send it backPreview every change, then write it to your system or export the files.

Schedule Builder

Workbook SetupEditing Sample school · 240 students.

Start over

Your own classes SwitchSemesters · 7 periods · Grades 9–12 ChangeSame every day Schedule type

Setup guide

Students240

Courses24

Sections63

Requests1,322

Teachers21

Rooms · optional15

Preflight

Ready to generate →

UndoRedoSearch all sheets… ⌘FFilterAdd dataDownload workbook

	Student ID *StudentID · match key	Name *	Grade	Gender
1	270001	Ava Diaz	9	X
2	270002	Owen Quinn	9	M
3	270003	Maya Engel	9	F
4	270004	Gabe Imani	9	M
5	270005	Eli Vance	9	F
6	270006	Lila Adams	9	M
7	270007	Soren Novak	9	F
8	270008	Romy Bauer	9	M

Add rowClear sheetColumns−1.0×+

Results

Settings×

Integrations

SystemsSend scheduleActivity

ScheduleSample school · Max Fulfillment

DestinationVeracross

Schedule locked for this sendCompared to live SIS

Will change

1,282Enrollments to add

63Sections to create

0Sections to update

63Rooms to set

I reviewed this preview. Sending writes to the live system.

Push schedule

Verified: all 1,282 enrollments are in the SIS.

Preview changes

Run it alongside your old method the first year. Build both and compare them on your own data.

Starting mid-year is fine. Bring the running schedule in and work on next year, but don’t rebuild a live schedule in February.

If you leave

If you ever leave, you take everything with you.

21 exportable datasets as CSV, Excel or PDF, on every plan: student schedules, rosters, teacher and room schedules, unfilled requests and more. Calendar files per student and teacher, and a OneRoster archive. Your student information system stayed the system of record the whole time.

What we need from you

Next year’s course requests

Your course catalog, and who can teach what

Your bell schedule, and how the year divides

Rooms and capacities, if you want them placed

An administrator, only if the system is connected

Stop building it by hand.