[887] in resnet
Re: staff scheduler with Schedulesource
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric)
Tue Feb 26 21:16:51 2002
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Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20020226205752.00a99530@mailbox.syr.edu>
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 21:00:34 -0500
Reply-To: Resnet Forum <RESNET-L@listserv.nd.edu>
From: Eric <esabra01@MAILBOX.SYR.EDU>
To: RESNET-L@listserv.nd.edu
In-Reply-To: <3C7C05DA.B8E7CD73@kent.edu>
A little feedback on Schedule Source, from the person who does most of the
student scheduling here at SU. I passed along Wendy's original e-mail
because I'm not very familiar with the administrative functions.
Eric Abrams
Senior Consultant
Syracuse University
Computing and Media Services
Wendy,
We just started using Schedule Source this semester here at Syracuse
University for approximately 50 student employees working for CMS, and our
experiences have been very positive. Schedule Source has been a
significant improvement over our old system of manually composing schedules
at the beginning of every semester and having to repeatedly print out new
paper copies every time a change was made. It is difficult to say for
sure, because some energy was expended simply setting up the program for
the first time, but I would estimate that Schedule Source will cut the
resources necessary to maintain and oversee student scheduling by two thirds.
The main benefits that we have experienced with Schedule Source are:
1. The schedule is automatically on the web. This may sound silly, but it
became cumbersome to continually have two copies of the schedule, one in
Excel and another on the web. They ended up almost always being out of synch.
2. The built-in swap board in Schedule Source allows students to swap
shifts without intervention by full-time staff and these changes are
automatically updated in the schedule.
3. Although we modified the auto-schedule feature to meet our needs, it was
very helpful in eliminating most of the pain associated with students
manually trying to pick only the shifts they wanted to work and not the
shifts we needed to have filled. The auto-schedule feature in essence
became an independent middle-man who randomly distributed shifts based on
availability and skill level.
4. Students are now able to very easily see their own
schedule. Previously, students were forced to pick out their shifts from a
spreadsheet that regularly printed out on 6 pieces of paper.
5. It is very easy to gather statistics about our student employees using
the report feature. For example, information regarding the number of hours
worked each week, the number of hours worked by a particular student over a
set period of time, and how much money we are paying per shift/week/month
is now readily available.
6. Schedule Source was simply able to more efficiently assign shifts than
we were able to do previously by hand. When we converted from a manually
assigned schedule to one generated with the assistance of Schedule Source
we were able to cover almost an additional 50 hours per week with the same
number of student employees.
I think, however, that your concern about the auto-assign feature is well
founded. We modified the auto assign feature to better meet our needs by
doing two things:
1. We manually assigned our most experienced employees prior to populating
the remaining available shifts with the auto-assign feature. You can do
this by manually assigning shifts in the template that you use before
selecting auto-assign when you then produce a published scheduled. Or, you
can manually assign shifts in an unpublished schedule and then have
Schedule Source auto-assign students to the remaining available shifts by
clicking on update.
2. I manually reviewed the schedule that Schedule Source auto-produced and
made manual changes to it prior to publishing it to the students. This
allowed me to insure that the shift assignments made sense. I then
published the schedule without making it "firm" and allowed the students
themselves to review their shift assignments prior to it being finalized.
I hope this helps answers your questions. Feel free to send me email if
you have any further questions.
Sincerely,
Dan Ralley
Graduate Assistant
Syracuse University
Computing and Media Services
dmralley@syr.edu
At 05:02 PM 2/26/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Scheduling is always a headache when you have student workers staffing
>the helpdesk. I wonder if any other universities uses the on-line
>scheduling software from
>http://www.schedulesource.com
>
>It has some good features but with auto-assign feature, I feel have no
>control over the scheduling. I would like your feedback on this program
>if you are currently using it. How do you optimize the schedule with
>the built-in features?
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