Scheduling the Easier Way?

November 19, 2012 10:57 PM

Does-this-exist-filter: easy-to-use employee scheduler for Mac (OS 10.7.4), does not have high ongoing cost?

Looking for a schedule program that would be helpful in working out a calendar for a small group (~10) of workers with irregular leave requests and availability.

Ideally you'd be able to enter parameters for each worker (can't work X day this month, needs Y shifts/month etc.) and generally for everyone (can't work a night shift and then a day shift without turnaround time etc.) and...some program?...would figure out a decent schedule that wouldn't need hours and hours of hand-tweaking.

Super-bonus points for some kind of rules that would allow you to evenly distribute shifts designated as undesirable, allow for some individual preference in the end result (person A wants his shifts in one giant block, person B wants no more than 3 in a row), etc. but that seems...unlikely.

Is this a pipe dream? This has all been done by hand at this location for the last zillion years, but I wonder if there is a better way.

posted by charmedimsure to computers & internet (4 answers total)

Somewhat manual, but free: could each employee be granted a Google Apps account (e.g., "[e-mail]"), with the manager than scheduling shifts via the Google Calendar? He or she could see every person's availability, employees could block their time as needed, and just about everyone already knows how to use Google's services.
posted by ellF at 3:51 AM on November 20, 2012

The Google kludge is actually what they're currently using; didn't mention it because it the schedule output is still by hand that way. Would love suggestions for a more automated solution!
posted by charmedimsure at 8:00 AM on November 20, 2012

If you don't mind the advertising and that it is web based, there's MyWorkShift which appears to be free.
posted by samsara at 8:24 AM on November 20, 2012

We went to a hosted solution by when to work for our helpdesk and lab employee scheduling a long time ago. Basically you develop schedules, people schedule times available, request leave, trade shifts, etc and the manager can monitor the scheduling process.

It's pretty cheap (pricing is based upon tiers of employees and you can pay for a year at a time) and has export to google calendar functionality. I like it because as a hosted solution you don't have to make someone really learn how to admin the ap and we can just add it as a budget line into our M&0 budget.
posted by vuron at 10:38 AM on November 20, 2012