Quick Setup or Scenario Editor?

Choose the smallest truthful editor

Quick Setup and the Scenario Editor operate on the same grouping scenario, but they expose different levels of control. Choose based on whether the simpler editor can represent the real problem without hiding important scope or capacity details.

Quick Setup is not a “less accurate” solver. It is a deliberately smaller editing surface. The risk appears when the scenario contains controls Quick Setup cannot represent.

Stay in Quick Setup when

• the participant list is straightforward;
• groups are interchangeable or share the same approximate size;
• the visible common rules describe the actual task;
• you want a quick one-off schedule or an isolated guide example;
• you do not need to tune the solve plan directly.

Move to the Scenario Editor when

• groups are named rooms, stations, or teams with distinct capacities;
• attendance changes by session;
• a requirement or preference applies only to selected sessions;
• you need Group Visits, Attribute Sum, Encounters, or detailed objective control;
• you need to inspect and reproduce Solver workspace settings;
• the Quick Setup capability notice says part of the current scenario is not editable there.

Understand the handoff

The normal landing-page Quick Setup automatically creates or reuses a saved browser workspace after persistence initializes. A shared link remains temporary until you save a copy, and an isolated guide example uses a separate example scope. The application labels temporary workspace states rather than pretending they are already part of your saved scenario library.

When Quick Setup cannot safely represent part of a scenario, it may show the unsupported portion as unavailable or require an impact review before a change. Read that review instead of assuming a simplified control will preserve advanced scope.

The Scenario Editor handoff preserves the canonical scenario document rather than silently rebuilding a simpler approximation. If the application detects that the workspace changed while another scenario is being created or activated, it stops and reports the conflict.

Example actions in guides and Help create a clearly separate scenario when they need advanced controls. They do not overwrite the current scenario in the background.

A practical decision rule

Ask one question: Can every rule that matters be seen and reviewed in Quick Setup?

If yes, stay there. If no, use the Scenario Editor. Do not compensate for a missing control with an informal promise that the solver cannot evaluate.