[civsa] When to Work software

[Scott Kirkessner]

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

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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
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] on behalf of McLendon, Jennifer [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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