Is there an application that supports my scheduling needs?
June 17, 2013 7:18 AM Subscribe
I manage a group of people who do event support. In general my staff works normal working hours, but every now and then we'll be asked to work something off hours. What was a relatively rare occurrence is getting more frequent and my current methodology of using spreadsheets is starting to buckle.
Typically I'll get a request from the customer that says something like "we need to support event X from 0300 to 0800 with 2 people, one in timezone A and another in timezone B". So I look at my staffing in those two timezones, and shift someone who's normally working 8-5 to start earlier.
What I'm doing now is a spreadsheet with days in the columns. The top half is the events and times, and the bottom half is the people. Each event has a color for timezone (for example, event X which requires someone in timezone A is green, event Y which requires someone in timezone Y is yellow, etc). This works well when the events are all in one timezone, but starts to fail when the events are in multiple timezones. It is also poor at uncovering schedule gaps when I need to bring in temporary help. And since this spreadsheet is something I've tweaked to work for me, it is sometimes hard to export that knowledge to other people since most people are more used to a typical calendar interface.
What I'd like is an application/web service that lets me put in "event X in timezone A from 0300-1300", and then assign staff to those times which don't follow regular 8-hr schedules (i.e., if the event is only 3 days, I don't want to create a "shift" for that timeslot permanently, only for those 3 days). The web-based apps I've seen so far seem to work for standing shifts, not this variable scheduling problem I have.
Typically I'll get a request from the customer that says something like "we need to support event X from 0300 to 0800 with 2 people, one in timezone A and another in timezone B". So I look at my staffing in those two timezones, and shift someone who's normally working 8-5 to start earlier.
What I'm doing now is a spreadsheet with days in the columns. The top half is the events and times, and the bottom half is the people. Each event has a color for timezone (for example, event X which requires someone in timezone A is green, event Y which requires someone in timezone Y is yellow, etc). This works well when the events are all in one timezone, but starts to fail when the events are in multiple timezones. It is also poor at uncovering schedule gaps when I need to bring in temporary help. And since this spreadsheet is something I've tweaked to work for me, it is sometimes hard to export that knowledge to other people since most people are more used to a typical calendar interface.
What I'd like is an application/web service that lets me put in "event X in timezone A from 0300-1300", and then assign staff to those times which don't follow regular 8-hr schedules (i.e., if the event is only 3 days, I don't want to create a "shift" for that timeslot permanently, only for those 3 days). The web-based apps I've seen so far seem to work for standing shifts, not this variable scheduling problem I have.
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