Run a Load

Adjusting the master schedule potentially affects and causes conflicts for many students' schedules. For example, moving a course section to a different period may satisfy a number of unmet course requests, but this action can cause problems with others course requests.

As a result, whenever you change the master schedule, you need to reload students. You can also load students to check if the system can create better schedules for all students. Do this after you finish building a master schedule or if you made a number of changes to the schedule.

After running a load, import student schedules and then analyze the results. For more information, refer to Analyze the Results. After analysis, proceed with one of the steps outlined in Post-Load Options.

When performing a load, consider the following:

• Load priority is used to determine which substitutions should be made as well as which requests should go unfilled, if that is necessary. The engine always prefers to use substitutions instead of leaving a request unfilled, even if that means using a substitution on an important course instead of leaving an elective course unfilled.
• Load priorities are not a rank ordering. They are an importance rating. One request for a course with a load priority of 5 is equivalent to two requests with a 10 priority, three with a 15 priority, or four with a 20 priority. That means that, while these courses may have a priority of 5 and other courses have a priority of 10, it is just as good for the engine to leave the priority 5 unfilled as it is to leave two priority 10 courses unfilled; it is actually better for the engine to leave one priority 5 unfilled than to leave two courses with priority 9 or lower unfilled.

  
  

  For example, if a student has two 7 requests and one 5 request; while neither of the 7 requests can be filled outright, they both have substitutions; the substitutions, however, conflict with the 5 course, so the student can't get both. Therefore, it is better for the engine to miss the 5 and fill the two 7 requests with substitutions than it would be to leave the 7s unfilled and get the 5.

• To rate a course as really important, assign it a load priority of 1 or 10. For all other courses, rank according to how important they are relative to that 1 (or 10) course (even if that means using numbers like 1000). Then, as a second pass, double or quadruple their load priorities if any of those are semester or quarter courses.

1. Navigate to the PowerScheduler page.
2. Under Processing, choose Load from the PowerScheduler menu.

3. Use the following table to enter information in the fields:

   Field	Description
   Load type	Select a type of load: Load all students: The system reschedules all students. Previously created student schedules or manually adjusted student schedules are deleted. Balance: The system adjusts student schedules to help improve the balance of students among sections. There is no guarantee that students' schedules will not change. Reschedule the selected [x] students: The system reschedules only students whose schedules have not been locked. You can select this option multiple times.
   Close sections at maximum	Select the checkbox to ensure that courses close at their maximum enrollment numbers. Do not select the checkbox the first time you do a load. The build itself runs without considering section maximums, so this will let you determine if you can get a little better load percentage. Also, not closing sections at their maximums will help you focus on students with conflicts.
   Use global course substitutes	Select the checkbox to ensure that the system automatically inserts any global course substitutes after student course substitutes have been tried and rejected.
   Use student course substitutes	Select the checkbox to ensure that the system automatically inserts student course substitutes in the order chosen, if needed.

4. Click Execute. The engine starts to run.
   
   To view details about the load, click (Q) next to Load in the PowerScheduler menu, then click View in the Load Log column on the Load Student Schedules Queue page. To view errors and messages produced by the load, click View in the Results Log column. For more information about the Results Log, refer to Load Results Log. After successfully loading schedules, import the results of the load. For more information about importing, refer to Import Student Schedules.
   
   The Import link does not appear on the Load Student Schedules Queue page if only validation was performed. For more information about load validation, refer to Load Validation.