beginner question: specify tasks that run sequentially in arbitrary sequence without allocating resources at the same time

[Ulf Mehlig]

Dear all,

I'm trying to learn taskjuggler to tackle the following problem:

I want to schedule university classes. Each course consists of several classes of, say, 11 or 15 days. Classes for each course are given sequentially (course 1: class1, then class 2, ..) but the actual _order_ of classes within the course does (should!) not matter. Courses, on the other hand, occur in parallel. Classes are taught by lecturers. Each lecturer can be teaching in several courses but may not teach two classes at the same time. I tried to represent the classes by subtasks within a course-task and then allocated the lecturers to each class. However, the classes are all held at the same time, as long as classes of each lecturer do not overlap (so each course's students would have to attend several classes at the same time, which is not possible). I tried to allocate an additional dummy lecturer resource to all classes of a course but that doesn't have the desired effect.

In the following example, lect2 teaches in both courses and her classes should not overlap. On the other hand, the classes in each course must be taught sequentially (and the sequence itself should depend only on lecturer availability, and not on priorities, dates etc.)

resource lect "Lecturers" {
 resource lect1 "A. Smith" { 

                   ....
                   }
 resource lect2 "B. Miller" {
     ...
   }
         ....

         }

task math "Math course" {
        task alg "Algebra" {
               effort 11d
   allocate lect2
    }
          task geo "Geometry" {
                 effort 15d
   allocate lect1    
     }

             ...
}

task phys "Physics course" {
        task mech "Mechanics" {
               effort 11d
   allocate lect2
    }

            ...
 }batch of

If there is a solution for this scenario in taskjuggler, I would be glad to get suggestions how to make it work.

Many thanks for your help!

All the best, Ulf

[etoimene]

Interesting. I am following.