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1. Selecting courses
2. Reading timetables
3. Accessibility
4. FAQs
5. Support
6. Developers

Selecting courses

Searching for courses

You can search for courses on the Course Timetable Browser (CTB) using many criteria, combined if you wish:

• School
• Subject areas
• Credit level
• Year the course is normally taken in
• Postgraduate / Undergraduate / Both
• Courses for visiting students or non-visiting students
• Search terms (matching the course name or code)

Changing these will update the course lists so you can select them. To search by search term, type in the term and then either hit return or click "search".

You may see messages when selecting courses:

• Enter search criteria to view courses.
  You must enter some criteria to view courses, otherwise the list would be too long.
• Too many courses returned. Please refine your search criteria.
  Your criteria are too vague: try narrowing down your search with other parameters.
• No results found.
  Your criteria are too specific and there are no courses matching them running this year.

Selecting courses

Once you've found a course, to select it simply press the '+' button next to the course. The course will then appear at the bottom of the page beneath "Selected courses". You can deselect it by pressing the '-' button.

Reading timetables

Course events

Events appear as blocks on your timetable. They have a coloured header depending on the course they belong to, which if the event is optional (i.e. not a full class event) will be striped and have an "OPT" label on it. By default all optional events will appear closed, so you can just see the header. The event is labelled with the event type (e.g. lecture), name, weeks it runs in, locations and additional information is available:

• If you're viewing a semester 1, semester 2 or semester 1 / semester 2 combined timetable, you will see "week lights" at the bottom of each event. These appear highlighted in each of the weeks the event runs in, so you can see more clearly when events clash or not. You can turn these off by clicking "Hide week lights" at the bottom of each event.
• You can open up additional details about events by clicking the caret button, which will give you the course code of the event, a link to open the event in DRPS, and if it exists the event description. There is a toggle button at the bottom of the page to open / close these on all the events.

Optional course events

Optional events are not optional in the sense that you can choose whether or not you want to take them, but are events that must be chosen between. Note that sometimes the allocations of these will be done within your school.

If you see an optional event, it will have a label e.g. 'C3' on the right of it. This means it is part of the 'C' group of options, of which you must pick on of the numbered sets. Hovering over these events will tell you what you must choose between more clearly, e.g. it may say "Choose one of options C1-C5". It is possible that there will be multiple events with the same label, e.g. several labelled "C3". In this case, if you choose "C3", you must take all of these events.

Optional events by default appear closed, i.e. you can only see the event header with the name and label. You can toggle these all open by clicking "Show all events" at the top of the page, or individually by clicking on the event header. You can only open up individual events if you have the toggle at the top set to "Show full class events only", not "Show all events".

When you hover over an optional event, it will highlight all other choices you have for that slot, i.e. in our example above if I hover over 'C3' it will highlight all the other 'C' events. If your timetable is quite full and going off the screen, you can lock this highlight by opening an optional event (clicking the header), and clicking on the event body that opens up. The event will appear with a glow, and will keep highlighting all the other events as you scroll down the page. To cancel this, just click anywhere on screen.

You can see how selections will look by opening your chosen optional events, and then clicking "Hide all unselected optional events" at the bottom of the page. This hides any unopened ones from view, giving you a clearer view of your possible timetable.

The top of the page will include a list of all the optional slots you have to choose between, e.g. "Here you must choose one of each of the A, B, C, D options.". When you open an optional event, say "A2", the corresponding group will get a tick next to it, so you can keep track of the groups you still need to choose options for.

Jointly taught events

Some events in timetabling are jointly taught, i.e. they have more than one course assigned to them. In most cases this works fine and the event will appear as normal, but occasionally if you search for two courses that share a jointly taught event simultaneously, you will see slightly different looking course events. This is because typically these events are not meant to be taken together, so we won't be able to calculate optional class slots etc.

Accessibility

Responsive design

If you're using a device with a small screen, or have reduced the window size significantly, CTB will give you an alternative "list" view of the course events.

• As you can no longer see the column headers with the times, the event times now appear in each event. Note that the events within each day are not necessarily ordered by the start / end time.
• You can still perform all the operations in this display e.g. higlighting courses or removing unselected ones etc.
• As you scroll down the page in this view, the current day you're viewing will stick to the top of the page so you don't get lost.
• Clicking print on this view will revert back to the grid view on print layouts.

Low visibility version

To view a low visibility version of your timetable, click "Low visibility version" at the bottom of the page. This will make the timetable appear in black and white, increase the font sizes, and add the start / end times into each event.

CTB is designed to scale and adapt to your device, so you can expand or shrink the screen using your browser's zoom tools.

FAQs

Can I view timetables for other years?
No, sorry. CTB only shows the timetable for the current academic year: which at the moment is 2022/3.

I get "An error occurred: You selected too many courses." message
We limit you to displaying timetables for up to 30 courses at a time on CTB.

I get an error like "Unable to connect to the database"
This means CTB is experiencing difficulties connecting to the timetabling / course information at the moment. If the problem persists, please notify support by opening a Unidesk ticket.

Support

If you're experiencing problems with CTB, contact support by opening a Unidesk ticket.

Developers

Linking applications with CTB

CTB receives all of its information through GET queries in the URL so it is simple for other applications to link into it.

Parameter	Example(s)	Description
Core information
courses	courses=MATH10027_SV1_YR,MATH10063_SS1_YR,PHYS10024_SV1_SEM1 OR courses[]=MATH10027_SV1_YR&courses[]=MATH10063_SS1_YR	Used to pass full course codes into CTB to generate the timetable of.
period	&period=YR &period=SEM1 &period=SEM2 &period=FULL &period=1,2,3,4,5,6	Used to pass the delivery period to show the timetable for. Shows week lights if YR, SEM1 or SEM2.
format	&format=json &format=xml	If set as either xml or json, replaces timetabling output with raw information in chosen format.
Window display options
embed	&embed	Removes all elements, margins & padding except the timetable: ideal for embedding.
no-title	&no-title	Removes the title at the top of the page.
no-buttons	&no-buttons	Removes the buttons above and below the timetable. Doesn't remove the navigation bar from the bottom.
no-courses	&no-courses	Removes the courses displayed at the bottom of a timetable.
no-key	&no-key	Removes the key.
Timetable display
no-header-scroll	&no-header-scroll	Stops the header scrolling with the page.
open-all-events	&open-all-events	By default opens all events (including optional).
no-week-lights	&no-week-lights	Does not display the week lights on events.
Navigation display
no-nav	&no-nav	Completely hides the navigation bar at the bottom.
no-scroll	&no-scroll	Removes the scroll buttons from the navigation bar.
no-print	&no-print	Removes the print button from the navigation bar.
no-timeframe-change	&no-timeframe-change	Removes the timeframe change button.
show-close	&show-close	Replaces the back arrow with an "X" that uses JavaScript to close the window. Useful if the application links to CTB in a new window.
back-url	&back-url=http%3A%2F%2Fpath.is.ed.ac.uk	Replaces the back URL with a specified link to return to your application. It will need to be encoded for GET requests accordingly, and does not support many special characters for security reasons.