Free online Shift roster for School Covid Screening

August 2, 2021 1:16 AM

At our school, all teachers have to 'volunteer' for early morning screening of staff and students (our government wont pay for someone to do this, so it's up to us). It's become an eternal stressful bun fight due to the usual stuff: people not putting their names down, or not pitching. And then there's the tatty paper based list which circulates around the school, getting lost and scrawled on. I'm thinking an online shift roster might help, if it can do the following:

- be free (we have no budget for this)
- run inside Google Workspace or sync with it. Not essential, but we use Workspace for other stuff and all staff email contact details are already in the contact list
- Have constraints such as:
-- can't overwrite/delete someone else's shift input
-- will ask you to input a certain number of shifts during certain times
e.g. 1x 6.30am shift + 1x 7.00am shift
e.g. 2x 6.30am shift OR 3x 7.00am shift
-- send notification if shift has not been filled in
-- send reminders

If we can find something user friendly and easy to set up it could be useful for a bunch of other stuff as well.

posted by BrStekker to Technology (4 answers total)

Best answer: I have used Signup Genius for this sort of thing in the past. The free version should be able to do everything except maybe the "certain number of shifts during certain times" -- you can certainly set it up to have two 6:30am screeners if that's what you mean, but I don't think it automates the other way where one person must pick two 6:30am slots or three 7am slots before they confirm.

Sign Up Genius does require people to actually sign themselves up, though. If the issue is that some people are forgetting ("forgetting") to take part, it may be best to just assign names to dates/times. Whoever does this should have a strong stomach for people wheedling for changes.
posted by basalganglia at 4:09 AM on August 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

If you're using paper now, and already have Google Workspace, a Google Calendar would be a huge improvement even if it doesn't tick all of your boxes. People not having to sign up for an use a different system is a HUGE plus.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:22 AM on August 2, 2021 [8 favorites]

Best answer: Google Calendar's Appointment Slots feature might work.
https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/190998?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop

It's a little backwards conceptually from the intended use case, but I think it might still line up.

It doesn't tick all your boxes - there's no constraints/"enforcement" - but it at least gets you off the paper sheet, prevents double-booking, and shows up on existing calendars.
posted by february at 7:39 AM on August 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

Google Calendar's Appointment Slots could do the constraints thing like this:

Set up one calendar for the 6:30 shift, another for the 7:00 shift, and tell people to choose one from HERE (with link to 6:30 calendar) and one from HERE (with link to 7:00 calendar).
posted by Rock Steady at 12:56 PM on August 2, 2021 [1 favorite]