Fortnight Anchor Dates and Week A / Week B
Fixed fortnightly lessons repeat every second week, on either Week A or Week B. For Octavia to know which calendar dates count as Week A and which count as Week B, your school needs a single fortnight anchor date . You o
Why This Exists
A weekly lesson is unambiguous: it happens on the same day every week. A fortnightly lesson isn't — "every second Tuesday" depends on which Tuesdays you mean. Octavia resolves this with one setting per school: the fortnight anchor date.
The anchor date marks the start of a Week A block. Every 7-day block after that alternates: Week A, Week B, Week A, Week B, and so on, indefinitely. Every fixed fortnightly student or group is assigned to Week A or Week B, and Octavia uses the anchor date to work out which real calendar dates that means.
This is a single, school-wide setting — not something you configure per student or per teacher. Every fixed fortnightly lesson at your school reads from the same anchor date, so Week A means the same thing for every teacher in the studio.
Working Out Week A and Week B
Once an anchor date is set:
- The 7 days starting on the anchor date are Week A.
- The next 7 days are Week B.
- The pattern keeps alternating A/B/A/B every week from there, both forwards and backwards in time.
Setting the Anchor Date
Only admins can set or change the fortnight anchor date. There are two places you'll come across it.
In School Settings
Go to School Settings, and you'll find a Fortnight anchor date field alongside your school name and timezone. Pick a date and save it — that's it. This is the main place to set it, and it works the same way whether you're a single-teacher studio or a multi-teacher studio.
The First Time You Need It
If you try to set a student or group's timetable to Fixed (fortnightly) before your school has an anchor date, Octavia blocks the fortnightly option and shows you why:
- As an admin, you'll see a notice with a Set Week A / Week B anchor button. Clicking it opens the same date picker inline, so you can configure it without leaving the page you're on.
- If you're not an admin, you'll be told to ask your administrator to set the school's anchor date before fortnightly fixed lessons become available to you.
Either way, you only need to do this once per school — after that, every fixed fortnightly student or group at your studio uses the same anchor date automatically.
Checking Which Week Is Which
Wherever you choose a Fortnight Week for a student or group, and in the main Scheduler, you'll see a small ? button next to Week A / Week B. Click it to open a summary that shows your school's current anchor date and lists out the actual date ranges for the surrounding weeks, with the current week marked. This is the quickest way to check "is next Tuesday a Week A or Week B?" without doing the maths yourself.
Changing the Anchor Date Later
You can change the anchor date at any time from School Settings, but do so with care once fortnightly lessons or bookings are already in regular use.
Moving the anchor date changes which calendar weeks Octavia treats as Week A and which it treats as Week B, from that point forward. It does not rewrite lessons that have already been created, but it does change what future lesson generation — and the Scheduler's Week A / Week B display — will treat as Week A or Week B for any given date. If your fixed fortnightly students are already generating correctly, changing the anchor date can shift them onto the opposite week going forward.
In practice, this means: choose your anchor date carefully before you start relying on fortnightly scheduling, rather than adjusting it once students and groups are already set up around it.
Multi-Teacher Studios: Shared With Room Bookings
In a multi-teacher studio, the same fortnight anchor date also drives fortnightly Room Bookings, and it can be set from the Rooms tab in School Settings as well as the main School Settings field described above. Both surfaces edit the same underlying date, so Week A and Week B stay consistent between your lesson schedule and your room bookings. See Room Bookings for the full room-booking walkthrough.