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Author Topic: Rostering software  (Read 2314 times)

oblivion

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Rostering software
« on: January 12, 2011, 05:32 AM »
I don't know where to post this, but I have a concept for a program that's probably a bit more than a snack but probably less than a full program...

It's come about because my wife has picked up the job of coming up with a staff rota at her workplace.

What would be useful to her, I think, is a program that could help with managing this.

You'd need to be able to handle a list of people, each of whom would have a number of hours to work in a given day, but where a working day would extend for longer than any one person would work. You'd need cover for the whole day, too.

I envisage a program that could be told a person's working week in terms of the number of hours, and a visual week planner that would be able to switch on a person for a given day and drag a bar, representing their shift, left and right on screen, with customisable gaps for meal breaks and the like. You'd want to be able to see that you'd allocated everyone's time over a time period -- a week, 4 weeks, a month -- and you'd also want to be able to see at a glance that you'd covered the work that needed to be done, so no unstaffed gaps.

Sort of a combination of project and time management but with a heavy emphasis on the visual elements and none of the stuff that these types of program might worry about related to charging and the like.

Does anyone know of anything that might already exist? Or be able to suggest an approach using something spreadsheety, perhaps, but without requiring coding skills I don't have?

-- bests, Tim

...this space unintentionally left blank.

Renegade

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Re: Rostering software
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2011, 06:05 AM »
Sounds like you're looking for scheduling software. There's LOTS out there. I'm sure there's lots of free stuff too. I know there is free scheduling software for education at least.
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steeladept

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Re: Rostering software
« Reply #2 on: January 12, 2011, 10:13 AM »
Renegade is right, there is a lot of software out there for this already, though I don't know that scheduling software searches will do it (haven't tried) (Just tried, that was spot on Renegade - Now I am off to research anew as this has a lot more options than I ever found previously :Thmbsup:) .  Unfortunately, I have never run across any that is free that is worth using.  I have looked for this type of software for a long time and the best ones I found are rather expensive (no surprise).  however, the best approach I have found for this at a reasonable cost is actually using the calandar app in Outlook.  If you need a free version, perhaps something like Sunbird would work?  Just thinking out loud here.  I will try to dredge up some of my research on what some of the better ones are with their associated costs....
« Last Edit: January 12, 2011, 10:15 AM by steeladept »