Why Does Timetabling Still Feel Like It's 2006?

I have to look back many years.

Back when a single question could bring an entire office to a halt:

“Hey… who has that document open?”

Then the scramble would begin.

People would check shared drives. Someone would walk down the hall. Someone else would yell across the office trying to find the person who had the file locked.

Once the person was found, one of several things might happen. They might get chastised. They might get a few dirty looks. Or everyone might simply accept that they were doing their job and that only one person could be in the document at once.

That was just how systems worked. Everyone knew it and had to live with it.

It was frustrating. It was limiting. But at least it worked.

The real issue was that one person had to own the document. That document became part of their job. It became their responsibility. In many cases it also became their territory.

They became the gatekeeper and the bottleneck.

Then something remarkable happened.

In the mid to late 2000s Google released the early versions of what became Google Workspace. Later Microsoft followed with the online version of Office.

Suddenly multiple people could write in the same document at the same time. For anyone who had spent years fighting with locked files, it felt almost unbelievable.

Changes were tracked. You could see who wrote what. You could open the same document from work, from home, or anywhere with a browser. No VPN required.

At first we were nervous.

We expected it to break. We expected to overwrite someone else's work. We expected someone to overwrite ours.

Sometimes that did happen.

But most of the time it worked, and over time it improved.

It was a genuine technological shift.

Multi user editing. Autosave. Web based access. No single gatekeeper.

Fast forward twenty years.

Today, in most areas of school technology, this model is completely normal.

Student systems. Learning management systems. Finance platforms. Communications tools.

All of them support multiple users working at the same time in a shared environment.

Except for one area.

Timetabling.

To be fair, colleagues in finance might argue their systems sometimes live in a similar era as well.

If you work in independent schools, the experience may feel strangely familiar. Many of the leading timetable systems used in Australia still rely on a single file that can only be opened by one person at a time.

In other words, the exact model we left behind two decades ago.

This creates gatekeepers. It concentrates artificial power in the hands of a few people. It creates bottlenecks for both the timetabler and the organisation.

None of this is really the fault of the people doing the timetabling. In many schools the timetabler carries an enormous responsibility and often works in relative isolation. They are the ones arriving early in the morning to sort out covers, juggling staff availability, room constraints, and student needs before most of the school has even had their first coffee. The systems they use did not create the pressure, but they can certainly amplify it.

For my own part, timetabling software is the area of school systems that I know the least about. When only one person can safely work in the system at a time, it naturally becomes specialised territory.

But the status quo does not have to stay that way.

A newer product called Atlantis Timetabling is approaching timetabling from a different angle. It is designed as a SaaS platform where multiple users can work in the system at the same time. The founders previously built another timetable product, so they understand both the technical challenges and the people who build school timetables.

As an independent consultant, I should note that I am not affiliated with Atlantis and I am not being paid to promote it. It simply appears to represent a more modern approach to timetabling. As always, schools should conduct their own investigations when evaluating software.

If a school has the opportunity to move to a multi user Web based timetabling platform, it is worth serious consideration. Almost every other critical system in a school already operates this way.

Are there other examples?

Compass Education has developed a product called Griddle. It is also multi user and SaaS based. One open question is interoperability.

At the time of writing, I am not certain whether Griddle supports the LISS integration standard that many timetable systems use to exchange data with Student Information Systems. The information available suggests that it was initially designed to support Compass, but may evolve over time.

If it does support the LISS standard, that would make integration with a variety of SIS platforms easier. If it does not, it may simply reflect that the product is still relatively new and those integrations have not yet been prioritised.

What is clear is that multi user SaaS timetabling is beginning to emerge.

The single file model is no longer a technical necessity.

The real question is whether the industry is ready to let it go.

And perhaps more importantly, whether the people who build the timetable every year actually want to.