How can I make scheduling classrooms easier?

[dna_atg]

I work at a college and am responsible for about 50 classrooms, scheduling
over 250 classes. My predecessor did all scheduling by hand, which has taken
me days! Does anyone know an easier way? We are a typical college, having
classes every other day or sometimes every day of the week. Most are an hour
but some are more or less. I want to be able to input class names, the
starting and ending times, and then have an excel-type grid that can be
printed to show the scheduling for a whole building (I am not real familiar
with Access but I could learn). Scheduling software is way out of our budget
at this point so I was hoping that Microsoft Office would have a program that
would meet my needs without having to buy new software.

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

Are you using an Exchange server? If yes, have you looked into scheduling
the rooms as resources for the different classes?

Have a look at this page for the different options for scheduling resources
using Exchange and Outlook:
http://www.slipstick.com/calendar/skedresource.htm

I would recommend the Direct Booking method, although you might find another
method more to your liking.


--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, dna_atg asked:

| I work at a college and am responsible for about 50 classrooms,
| scheduling over 250 classes. My predecessor did all scheduling by
| hand, which has taken me days! Does anyone know an easier way? We
| are a typical college, having classes every other day or sometimes
| every day of the week. Most are an hour but some are more or less.
| I want to be able to input class names, the starting and ending
| times, and then have an excel-type grid that can be printed to show
| the scheduling for a whole building (I am not real familiar with
| Access but I could learn). Scheduling software is way out of our
| budget at this point so I was hoping that Microsoft Office would have
| a program that would meet my needs without having to buy new
| software.