1. Why mapping matters

vPlan's solver needs to know who can teach what. The faculty & subject mapping is the bridge between your instructor records and your courses:

  • It tells the solver which instructors are eligible for each course.
  • It lets the solver spread a subject across the faculty who teach it, instead of dumping everything on one person.
  • It prevents the classic error of assigning a course to a teacher who has no relationship to it.

How it fits: courses belong to a department & section, and instructors are mapped to those courses. When you generate, the solver only places a course in slots where a mapped instructor is free.

2. Open Teacher Mapping

From the dashboard sidebar, click Teacher Mapping. You'll see your departments, their courses, and the instructors who can teach them — all on one screen.

If you've just imported data via Excel, this screen is where you finish the job: your instructors exist, but until they're mapped to courses, the solver can't use them.

3. Assign instructors to subjects

  1. Choose a department from the list to focus on its courses.
  2. For each course, select the instructor(s) who teach it.
  3. A course can have multiple instructors — that's normal for labs and large subjects. vPlan distributes the teaching load between them.
  4. Save your changes. The mapping is stored and used on every future generation.

Need to reorganize later? Reopen Teacher Mapping at any time — updates take effect on the next generation.

4. Verify the mapping

A quick sanity check before generating saves you a round trip:

  • Every course in the department has at least one instructor.
  • No instructor is mapped to courses in two departments they don't actually teach.
  • Lab-heavy subjects have the right pair of instructors assigned.

Pro tip: After generation, open the faculty timetable view. If any instructor has gaps you'd rather fill — or a subject is unbalanced — adjust the mapping and regenerate.

5. Common mistakes to avoid

Unmapped course: a course with no instructor can't be scheduled. The solver will report it as unplaced — map it and regenerate.

Single-teacher overload: if one instructor is mapped to every section of a subject, generation may fail or produce a lopsided week. Spread the subject across eligible faculty.

Mapping across departments: an instructor can teach across departments, but only if both mappings exist. Check both departments before generating a college-wide schedule.

Get the mapping right and the whole generation becomes a one-click affair.