[civsa] When to Work software

Mon Nov 2 08:04:21 CST 2015

We started using when to work in February and love it! I have an assistant manager who does all the scheduling and this is much more efficient than our old system, which was essentially an excel spreadsheet. The ambassadors love it too. It's easy to create schedules, templates, update availability and contact information all in one place. There are many more capabilities we haven't explored yet, but they have lots of resources on their website to check out if you have the time. Would definitely recommend W2W.

Andrea
University of Waterloo

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 30, 2015, at 4:11 PM, Shanna Pomager <Shanna.Pomager at du.edu<mailto:Shanna.Pomager at du.edu>> wrote:

We also find it very helpful, and supplement communication with Slack. Students will add their shifts to the trade board on W2W and then “advertise it” using slack.

Shanna Pomager
Sr. Associate Director of Admission & Campus Visit Manager
Undergraduate Admission
303-871-7645 | Shanna.Pomager at du.edu<mailto:Shanna.Pomager at du.edu>

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<image008.png><https://www.facebook.com/uofdenveradmission>  <image009.png><https://twitter.com/DUAdmissions>  <image010.png><https://instagram.com/duadmission/>  <image011.png><https://www.youtube.com/user/duAdmissions> | www.du.edu/admission<http://www.du.edu/admission>

From: listserv [mailto:listserv-bounces at civsa.org] On Behalf Of Marty Schmidt
Sent: Friday, October 30, 2015 9:52 AM
To: 'listserv at civsa.org<mailto:listserv at civsa.org>'
Subject: Re: [civsa] When to Work software

We use W2W here at Stevenson.

We have 70 Student Ambassadors to coordinate schedules for.  WhenToWork has definitely been helpful in allowing students to find coverage for their shifts if they have to miss them for any reason.  We also find it really useful when we have extra shifts (group visits, student panels, etc. – you can see an example of our weekly schedule below) that we need to find coverage for.  I’ve found the mobile site to be more useful for the students then the actual WhenToWork.com<http://WhenToWork.com> website.

As long as students remember to log in to WhenToWork to check for open shifts or to make sure someone requested to pick up their shift, we’ve found it to be a pretty useful tool.  I’ve created admin logins for my Senior Ambassadors so that they can do the scheduling and approving when other Ambassadors request to pick up shifts.

The biggest problem we’ve had is that our Ambassadors start to ignore the WhenToWork emails and messages and we have to gently remind them about picking up and dropping shifts.

I’d be happy to chat more in depth about how we use WhenToWork.

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Marty

Martin Schmidt
Assistant Director of Admissions
Stevenson University

443.352.4454 (direct)
410.486.7001 (main)
443.352.4440 (fax)
mschmidt at stevenson.edu<mailto:mschmidt at stevenson.edu>

From: listserv [mailto:listserv-bounces at civsa.org] On Behalf Of Scott Kirkessner
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2015 12:18 PM
To: 'listserv at civsa.org<mailto:listserv at civsa.org>'
Subject: Re: [civsa] When to Work software

Welp, I don’t even know when to start.

For me – W2W was inherited from my predecessor, and maybe its because I didn’t really have a ton of time to learn how to use it really well (but then again the way I was showed how to use it was how he used it) but it was an incredible nuisance and took up lots of my time to sort out.

If you have hourly staff in the office who do much more than campus tours (like I used to), it was very cumbersome.  Entering staff availability was great, but scheduling was difficult because you had to enter a shift for every single station you had, and the way it was done here to enter a one hour shift for every station… that’s 9 hours across 12 stations for us, in addition to campus tours.  Then when you hit the button to fill the slots, it was all randomized and we would have people scheduled at Station A from 8-9 to and then Station B from 9-10 and so on.  Most of the ambassadors were savvy enough to work it out amongst themselves to stay longer than an hour, but because some stations had different duties, some actually did move from station to station.

I tried to make longer shifts, but the problem is, some ambassadors would only be available thru a half hour, so if I tried to schedule a 2 or 3 hour shift, it wouldn’t assign.

Lastly, their schedules would change weekly because it was all random – so Ambassadors would have no idea what their schedule would be until it was released.

So it finally got to the point to me for where I took all their availability, and then had to work backwards to create a weekly shift schedule for them with longer shifts.  I realized that I can do the same thing with an excel spreadsheet or a Microsoft outlook calendar.  The staff now knows their tour schedules a semester in advance, and work the same hours every single week.  And it saves us $200 a year.

Again, maybe there were features none of us learned, or maybe the system is a hot mess.  1/10 would not recommend, but your mileage may vary

Scott

PS – Registration for our Student Development Institute in Boston AND our Annual Conference in San Diego is now open!  Register today at www.civsa.org<http://www.civsa.org>

AND don't forget to fill out the Strategic Planning Member Survey!  http://civsa.onefireplace.com/fall-2015-welcomer-securing-the-future-with-strategic-planning

From: listserv [mailto:listserv-bounces at civsa.org] On Behalf Of Trent Sandles
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2015 10:02 AM
To: listserv at civsa.org<mailto:listserv at civsa.org>
Subject: Re: [civsa] When to Work software

I also would like to hear any other feedback that you get from this please.

Sincerely,

Trent Sandles
Campus Visit Coordinator
Texas Wesleyan University
817-531-4445
________________________________
From: listserv [listserv-bounces at civsa.org<mailto:listserv-bounces at civsa.org>] on behalf of McLendon, Jennifer [Jennifer.McLendon at unt.edu<mailto:Jennifer.McLendon at unt.edu>]
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2015 10:56 AM
To: listserv at civsa.org<mailto:listserv at civsa.org>
Subject: [civsa] When to Work software
Hi CIVSA!

I’m considering using the When to Work app for ambassador scheduling.
If any of you use When to Work and could give me feedback on the pros and cons I would really appreciate it.

Thanks!
Jennifer McLendon
University of North Texas
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