Overview

Once you've created one or more Classes in your School, you can use Session Schedules to pre-start the session hosts so they're ready for students to log in immediately. A Schedule defines dates and times at which a number of remote session instances should be powered on for a group of students; you can create multiple Schedules for each class.

Typically, instances require 3-5 minutes to power on an be ready for students to connect; thus, itopia recommends setting the Start time for your schedules for a few minutes before the time that students will actually log in to their sessions.

NOTE: When sessions are started using a Session Schedule, they will consume usage credits regardless of whether a user is logged in. Therefore, you should carefully define the Session Schedules to ensure they do not consume usage credits unnecessarily. If student activity is not detected within 15 minutes after the session is started, the session is terminated.

Creating a Session Schedule

1. Log into the Labs Admin Portal (labs-admin.itopia.com) as a user with Editor or higher permissions. Navigate to the Classes tab.
2. Create a new Class, or click on an existing Class to view its configuration.
3. In the Session Scheduler section, click Add to create a new schedule for this Class.
4. Provide the necessary information to create a new schedule:
   • A display name for the schedule
   • The days of the week for which the schedule should apply
   • The Start time for the schedule; this is the time at which the session instances will be powered on. Instances are powered off after 15 minutes if a user does not connect to their session.
     • NOTE: The Start time setting uses the local timezone of the administrator that is creating the schedule, based on their local device/browser setting.
   • The students to include in the schedule. A session will be started for each selected student.
5. Click Add.

The new schedule will take effect immediately and will be applied until it is deleted. Currently, there is no way to define holidays or other excluded days from the schedule; this functionality may be added in a future release.