Vancouver’s InFocus Film School signs on for EventMAP’s Timetabler solution

EventMAP are delighted to announce that one of Canada’s top independent film schools is to implement Timetabler, our cloud-based timetabling package, ahead of a period of anticipated growth.

‍InFocus Film School is Vancouver’s top cinematic arts training institution, offering diploma and certificate programs in film production, 3D animation, visual effects, screenwriting and digital graphic design from their campus based in Gastown in the heart of downtown Vancouver. Keen film fans will already know that British Columbia is the third largest hub in North American for film and television production after Los Angeles and New York – earning Vancouver the nickname of ‘Hollywood North’ due to the sheer volume of productions that take place there.

Traditionally, InFocus had been using spreadsheets to create timetabling schedules – an unscalable approach that stood as a barrier to meeting their growth demands and one which could not easily highlight scheduling clashes. Realising quickly that they needed a robust, scalable solution that allowed their scheduling team and academic staff to easily produce effective, clash-free schedules, they produced a list of other requirements for their ideal solution – such as comprehensive reporting to optimise their curriculum delivery, visual timetable editing, time-saving tools such as schedule rollovers and a cloud platform to mitigate the need for internal hosting and maintenance.

After an initial consultation to discuss their requirements, EventMAP deemed that Timetabler would be best suited to meet their scheduling needs. Timetabler – our curriculum and training scheduling application – is designed to help users achieve fast, flexible and accurate autoscheduled timetabling solutions, and assist with managing the wider scheduling process, including ‘what-if’ scenario modelling. Within the entertainment industry, Timetabler has already proven its effectiveness with successful deployments in dBs Music campuses in the UK and Germany.

During their evaluation of the software, InFocus identified several aspects of the application that they believed would enhance their processes and enable them to easily scale future operations. These included the comprehensive timetable visualisation tools and the ability to visualise their resource structure in a directory format. They were also impressed with the ease of use of all the available scheduling functionality – such as being able to schedule events by dragging and resizing on the calendar, a rollover tool to easily duplicate existing schedules and a decision support system to highlight clashes or constraint violations using an integrated schedule adviser. Timetabler’s comprehensive support for third-party integrations, such as Google/Outlook calendar synchronisation and Moodle, was also a deciding factor.

We’re really looking forward to working with the InFocus timetabling team – and confident that Timetabler will prove to be a significant boost to their expansion plans over the coming years.

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