How should I schedule multiple people in multiple places?

September 6, 2013 11:22 AM

I will be assigning a small staff to shifts in multiple locations at different times on a weekly (or bi-weekly) basis. I need to develop an efficient way to keep track of who is supposed to be where at what times, and be able to keep that data for future reference. It would be great if I could keep track of how many shifts each person is assigned on a monthly/quarterly basis. I'm envisioning cumbersome spreadsheets that I'm loathe to create from scratch. Is there an Excel template or a (free/cheap) software solution that will do this for me? Do you do this sort of thing and have advice for me? I'm not the kind of person to reinvent the wheel, so I'd appreciate any help I can get.
posted by LouMac to Work & Money (2 answers total)

This is the coolest one I've seen/heard of lately. It's also the only one I can think off the top of my head that both isn't crap and isn't also part of a super expensive POS system with expensive contracts/yearly fees/etc.

It also has integrated shift trading functionality, a smartphone compatible mobile site for people to check their shifts/swap on, and other cool 21st century bits. Not to mention its cloud based so you don't have a single point of failure or have to be emailing it around.

There might be a better thing out there though, since I myself mainly do POS stuff and have barely bumped in to anything like this...
posted by emptythought at 12:15 PM on September 6, 2013

I had to schedule 150 volunteers, 20 staff, and 8 candidates for three days of campaigning, and I ended up just making an excel sheet and using things like COUNTA (I don't remember the explicit formula) to count how many times each person appeared in each row and column. I'm sure there are more sophisticated methods, but we were pretty strapped for cash. The columns were places, the rows were times, and under the places columns were more categories (candidate, staff, volunteer). Outside of the expected shit that happens with campaigns, the excel sheet actually worked really well.

For us, the places were more important than the people. For you, it might be the other way around. In that case I would put the people across the top, times down the bottom, and places in the squares. For mine, it was places across the top, times down the side, people in the squares. The second tab was people across the top, times down the side, and places in the squares. If I would do it again, I would make a third tab which would be the absolute master schedule (9:30 AM: Candidate A, B, C here, Candidate D, E here, Candidate F in class).

Advice: color code
Include a master schedule time-wise (so the "9:30 AM: Candidate A, B, C here" one)
If the number of places is too many to view without scrolling on the spreadsheet, split your staff/locations into two teams.
"Freeze panes" in excel will be your best friend.

I don't think this will be as cumbersome as you realize. I was also juggling candidate's class schedules (so I couldn't just be like: at any time, eight candidates need to be in places, because there weren't always eight candidates available), staff class schedules, and volunteer irregularities ("I said I was available for eight hours on Monday but I actually meant I don't have class on Monday and tbh I'd rather take a nap."), plus keeping track of twenty computers. It all worked out pretty well :).

(Of course, if this is for a campaign, then I would have a whole bunch more suggestions for you :) )

I'm sure this was very disjointed. Let me know if you have any specific questions :).
posted by obviousresistance at 3:56 PM on September 6, 2013