Tes Timetable vs UniTime

Tes Timetable creates and adjusts school schedules, including complex timetables, using automated scheduling or manual allocations. It can identify teacher and room clashes, help resolve them, adapt to staffing changes, and assign student subject choices. Schools can fine-tune schedules to their requirements, manage flexible working requests, and make supplementary timetables for student groups with needs outside regular activities. Premium and Premium Plus include Choice, an online class-selection portal that supports electives with prerequisites and multiple streams, balancing lines with room and staffing data. Those packages also include Daily, which provides temporary timetabling for staff absences, automated communications, and SMS and email notifications. Tes says the product integrates with more than 70 systems, including Compass, Sentral, Arbor, and iSams. The product is available on web and Windows. The E10 desktop application requires a native 64-bit Windows 10 or later PC; macOS is not supported for E10. Pricing is on request, and the Australian product page offers a free demo.

UniTime is a free educational scheduling system for course and exam timetables, room sharing, and student class assignments. Course scheduling can account for student demand, curricula, historical patterns, faculty and room preferences, and relationships among classes. Its examination module builds term schedules intended to minimize student exam conflicts and can schedule midterms and finals. The web-based Events interface lets staff and students request events or search for available times and locations, with notices sent to organizers. Student scheduling assigns students to available class spaces using course requirements and timetable information, but cannot guarantee that every conflict will be resolved. UniTime runs as a server-client application with a web interface and platform-independent distributions. It can operate independently or connect to an existing student information system; documentation describes XML imports and exports and RESTful interfaces. Installation guidance covers Linux, Windows, and Mac. Administrators may configure SSL access through Tomcat and LDAP authentication. The application is distributed under Apache License 2.0. The installation page recommends UniTime 4.8 for production, while UniTime 4.9 is still in development.