Holidays – how we did it

We’ve added brand new functionality! It allows you to divide the school year into periods and set vacations for each period, and more.

As it was before

You could include holidays for the schedule and name them whatever you like, for example “Hooray, Christmas holidays!“. The vacation functionality was pretty simple – don’t show activities on dates when the user is looking at the home screen or the widget.

Assignments during the holidays are displayed, because even during the holidays there may be some kind of homework: read, repeat, prepare.

What users asked for

But immediately after the holidays appeared, we were bombarded with questions in support:

1. How to add multiple vacations?

2. How to make it so that after the holidays there is an even / odd week?

But really, how to do it? Letting you add a few vacations is the simplest solution. For a school, this option is suitable, because there is no alternation of weeks even/odd, red/blue, top/bottom etc. But this will not work for universities.

What have we done

We added a new entity to the schedule and named it “Period“. For the school, such a period is quarterfor university – semester. You can add as many periods as you like and name them however you like: “quarter 1“, “Semester 2“, “Session“.

For each period, you can optionally add holiday. And if your schedule alternates between weeks, then for each period you can set which week it starts from.

If you have a so-called rolling schedule “shift schedule“, in our terminology “custom week“, then for each period, the day from which the period begins is selected. Relevant for schools in North America.

What problems have been solved

1. Several vacations – now you can add multiple vacations within study periods. The date range for holidays is automatically substituted from the end of the school period.

2. Start of each period – for multi-week schedules and for rolling schedules. Allows you to flexibly change the order of the weeks before and after the holidays.

3. Time frame for classes – on the activity creation screen, you can select the periods during which this activity will be displayed. If periods are not selected, the session is always repeated.

4. Create subperiods – during exams, credit weeks, it is useful to show specific events that are relevant only at this time.

How it works

Now the most interesting. How does the rotation of several weeks of the schedule work? How does the count of days for a custom week work?

If you have not created any period, then the schedule has settings for the current week (for rotating schedules) and the date of the first day (for a custom week). From the selected values ​​there is a countdown both Before and After the specified date/week.

In the case when periods are added, each period sets a new reference point for the week number or day of the custom week.

Consider an example of how periods work for a two-week schedule.

In the picture we see that the first period begins with 2nd week. For some time within this period, the weeks alternate. At the onset of the holidays, the counting of weeks continues, as if the period were continuing. This is for activities that were added without periods. After the holidays of the first period should be 2nd weekbut the new period sets its own rules for the first week. Period 2 begin with 1st week.

After the end of all periods, the schedule is subject to the alternation of weeks from the last period. Classes added without periods will be displayed according to these rules. Classes with periods will no longer be displayed.

Before the first period, the alternation works in the opposite direction from the first period (arrow to the left). It is necessary to understand when to show classes added without specifying periods.

Ratings and reviews

And of course we haven’t forgotten about our favorite screen”what’s new” to collect ratings and feedback with the release of the new version.

The news about the training periods was received calmly. A week after the release was received 348 ratings with an average of 200-300 ratings per week. Probably because this feature has yet to be evaluated during the holidays.

And the screen about new widgets for iOS 16 set a new record. In a week we have collected 1107 ratings.