8 ms·

Ask HN: Please review my app: Scheduling (employee scheduling software)

33 points by jseifer 15y ago

jseifer 15y ago
This has been my side project for a bit over a year now, working on it nights/weekends (I do Rails consulting full time). I finally thought it was good enough to get out there. There's definitely more I'd like to add to the app, such as shift trades, but I thought it was good enough for an MVP and would love any feedback.
dabeeeenster 15y ago
Signing up: Timezones drop down is not tab-able, and stops at GMT-5?!?! Speaking as a European, this is the sort of thing that really pisses us off!
- dabeeeenster 15y ago
  Its not clear to me that you have to post a schedule after saving it. I saved 3 before realising I had to post them to avoid losing them.
  - jseifer 15y ago
    Schedules that haven't been posted show up under drafts in the "Schedules" section. I think you're right and I need to find a way to make this more obvious.
- jseifer 15y ago
  Thanks, fixing the sign up tab index issue. I hadn't planned on opening it up outside of the US yet but you convinced me. Deploying that now, thanks!
mgkimsal 15y ago
The majority of places I've worked where schedules were 'posted' and I would 'trade shifts' with someone else have been retail and food service jobs, not 'office' jobs. Yet the signup page only talks about different sizes of offices ('small','medium', etc). Might want to reconsider that wording ("organization"?)
- geeksam 15y ago
  The last such place I worked was in a relay service call center. It was right smack in the middle of your retail/food service to office/cubicle continuum. But yes, "organization" would work nicely for both. Also: "team".
- jseifer 15y ago
  I like that wording a lot more and think you're right about that.
  - mthoms 15y ago
    As someone who manages a dozen retail employees I concur. I'm using a custom developed Excel/VBA solution but would love to use something web-based. If you are going to target retail business (I think you should) you should keep in mind that most people working retail are young and have other commitments (school, other jobs, etc). For this reason I think having employee-editable "availability" schedules would be a killer feature. edit: I see that you have a "request day off" feature: is it possible to request just a portion of a day off? Think - "I have an exam that morning but can work at noon"
    - jseifer 15y ago
      Yep that's built in though I should probably highlight it more on the tour. There are two possible ways to request time off: - In your profile. These are times that you can never work and they are recurring. You can set yourself to be unavailabile every Monday from 2-4pm, for example. - In the Requests Off section. This section is for one time requests off, as in your exam example.
jswinghammer 15y ago
I'd ditch that green header image you are using. It looks washed out on my machine. Love the concept though. I had to write auto-scheduling software for a call center in college so something like this would probably have broad appeal.
- rhizome 15y ago
  Bold and/or bigger and a slightly darker gray could make it work. it's the only real color on the page.
stinkytaco 15y ago
Some sort of graphical representation of hours covered would be awesome and I don't see it. That's the hardest thing about scheduling people in public service, making sure there's alway (x) people there. Maybe create a graphical representation of coverage. Also support lunches because that's important for the scheduler to know.
rokhayakebe 15y ago
How do you plan to reach customers? (without giving away your secret sauce) This is a question I will ask every "Review my app" from now on.
- jseifer 15y ago
  I was planning on doing a bit of online marketing but mostly in person -- brochures, business cards with the app info, phone calls, etc.
bonaldi 15y ago
The hardest part about making a complicated schedule is making sure all the posts are covered. Do I have six editors, four designers, two rewrite, one reader and three runners in on Sunday? And if not, who is available -- they haven't worked six days in a row, aren't due off that day or on vacation and have the right skills -- to cover? When your app can answer this for schedulers you've got something great. Otherwise I fear a spreadsheet is "good enough" and free. Good luck!
- jseifer 15y ago
  This was a wonderful comment and gave me a lot of ideas for targets to implement. Thanks!
- simonsquiff 15y ago
  I work for a company that specialises in scheduling software - our main market is healthcare, where this 'do we have the right staff?' question is key. It's a completely different ball game from simple 'this person is doing this' scheduling. You essentially have to understand the demand - not just number of staff of different types, but complex skill requirements; lots of info about supply (staff - their skills and various other bits of info that rules need to know about) and then have a rules engine that matches them together and can check for items like working too long in a row, or too many weekends, or whatever - all parameter driven as every manager wants different things. When you get this right - ie proper 'demand driven' scheduling - this is where the real benefits of scheduling software vs excel or paper come in. Instead of simply answering 'what is everyone doing' you are answering 'do we have the right staff - and if not, what is going wrong?' But a word of warning - it's a nightmare to get your product there. The devil is very much in the detail. If you've modelled the demand as three shifts, but some people fulfil the demand working 12 hour shifts, how do you show that all matched up? How from a ui perspective do you assign shifts in a way that prevents over staffing and understaffing? How can we model the demand in a way that allows for flexibility but isn't a massive pain to create for each schedule? I think you've done a good job of a simple and straightforward scheduling product that is affordable. Be careful about going down the rabbit hole of demand and rule driven scheduling. It sounds like a quick bolt on but actually you need to build it from the ground up with that concept in mind to really make it work. Good luck!
keizo 15y ago
Where can I email bugs/support? looking for an email address, so I can attach video. Thanks.
- jseifer 15y ago
  Support or bugs go to support@schedulingapp.com. There's a support link in the bottom right of the app as well.
pedalpete 15y ago
I built a similar project last year, but abandoned it due to lack of business. Just around the time I got my beta out, I discovered shiftplanning.com (they were in beta about a month before me) - I would say quality wise, my build was very similar to shiftplanning, much better than schedulefly. The reason I ditched it was that after working with a number of local businesses, I found they always had excuses to not use it. They would say stuff like 'if you can show us our monthly labour costs, then we'll start using it'. But they weren't able to get monthly labour costs the way they used excel, so an online solution would have been better. Another request was holiday scheduling, which I did add, but still, no increase in usage. It was excuse after excuse, so I clearly think this is an area where people recognize a pain, but don't seem to care enough about it. Along with that, my heart was not really in it (I was convinced to build it after mentioning to a friend that it was crazy how businesses were still scheduling with excel and paper, etc.etc.). The problems aren't technical. There are LOTS of scheduling sites. I hadn't seen any of quality until I built mine, and then saw shiftplanning. Your site looks pretty good, but schedulers should be able to select a shift, rather than entering a time, as most businesses have standard shifts for their business, and then need the ability to just edit the time for specific cases, stuff like that. In the end, I'm happy I didn't dedicate too much time to the project. Looking at the compete scores http://siteanalytics.compete.com/schedulefly.com+shiftplanning.com+scheduleanywhere.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/schedulefly.com+shiftplanni..., this just doesn't seem to be an area of interest to businesses. ShiftPlanning is free, and they still can't get a large number of users. The problems are multiple. 1) You can likely only target small businesses or branches of a larger business. I spoke to a few chains, and they all said (surprisingly) that they don't dictate an online schedule service for their outlets. 2) It is an add-on service option for large operations like call-centers,etc which is already offered through their pbx or other systems. One business I spoke to had an add-on which came with their ERP system. 3) along with the groups I mentioned already, here's another 3 http://siteanalytics.compete.com/fendza.com+helloscheduling.com+shiftboard.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/fendza.com+helloscheduling.... some of these guys have been at it a long time. I'll admit that I think most of these are poorly designed, but that can't be the only problem. I don't expect you to read this comment and just give-up. That would be lame. But I do hope to open your eyes a bit, maybe you'll see another opportunity in a related space, or this comment will help you somehow. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
frankydp 15y ago
The market inhibitor for scheduling software/app is usually the mixed needs factor. Offices have very little requirements for scheduling and the product would have to so much "better" than stubby pencil or excel that it is hard to drive usage. On the other hand service industries with volume concerns are so in depth with regards to scheduling that the product must integrate projections and production demands. The problem being that what those two words mean to each company is different. How each company employs the basics of volume projections are not standard. I have spent a decade vetting software and products to make scheduling easier but in the end the main inhibitor to adoption is ease of use. If it isn’t substantially easier to use and just as accurate and communicative as the original practice then adoption is a negative. Sorry for any typos.
ndespres 15y ago
I think you'd benefit from replacing the screenshot of the "my office scheduling" page on the homepage, with an explanatory graphic. The text there is too small to read, but I found myself squinting to make it out to try to glean the features I could expect from the product. As an example, I cite Highrise's homepage: http://highrisehq.com/ http://highrisehq.com/, where icons and descriptive text are used to better present what I can do with the application. I think that having two metrics of plan/pricing levels is confusing. I'd like to purchase by users in my office, but I don't care how many gigabytes of storage space it costs you. It's also not clear exactly what counts towards that storage quota. Will you be tallying the space used by my calendar events in your database? Will there be a feature where I can upload large files to share with appointments? I couldn't find an explanation of why I'd want to pay for storage space anywhere. Once this is defined, maybe an add-on of 'n' gigabytes of addon storage can be purchased for those requiring the additional space- but right now it just appears to be one more thing to confuse someone about to make a purchase.
swalberg 15y ago
I run a payroll site (http://smallpayroll.ca http://smallpayroll.ca). I could see some small businesses that rely on shift work like this, especially if it could push hours into their payroll software. There aren't enough features for a call centre to use it, but I could see convenience stores and restaurants loving it. What's the storage space used for? I looked at the pricing page and the storage per level really stood out. 1GB is a lot, what am I storing? How do I know I have enough storage?
boolean 15y ago
You might prevent the last person removing themselves from the project. After creating a project, I was able to remove myself. The project now has no one to be administered by.
- jseifer 15y ago
  Thanks a lot for that, I'll add in the validation.
flondon 15y ago
A feature you should strongly think about is around MI functionality. Smaller organisations, who I presume you are targeting, would typically use Excel for their MI needs. If you could automate the generation of pretty and useful MI, perhaps through a dashboard on the site, it would be a great route in. Better still, if you have paying customers how about meeting them and understanding first hand what they would find useful.
Miamlantavegas 15y ago
Good luck man.. it's a tough field to break into. Tons and tons of competitors (like me) and few businesses who would actually use it. - James F. Founder, Fendza.com (http://www.fendza.com http://www.fendza.com)
- Miamlantavegas 15y ago
  BTW; your site looks good, nice clean design.. I, too, would probably change the screenshot away from Office to something like restaurants, retails stores, etc. Funny thing is; you'll start getting people copying you almost exactly. I found two other 'employee scheduling software' sites that almost directly ripped off my entire website. Anyways, feel free to hit me up if you have any questions about anything.
psenhancer 15y ago
I noticed pedalpete actually mentioned my staff scheduling business (http://www.helloscheduling.com http://www.helloscheduling.com), Hello Scheduling in his compete metrics. A few important things to think about: 1) Those compete metrics are really far off compared to what I am seeing in Google Analytics. 2) You have to remember that Excel and paper schedules are REALLY flexible. If your scheduling software is rigid, people will sign up, but then abandon returning to what feels comfortable to them. Since we launched our application in mid-January 2011, we have consistently had sign ups but then high abandonment. As we've release features that made the product more flexible and addressed more unique scheduling needs, we've seen usage increase. This is a really tough space, but don't lose heart.

33 points by jseifer 15y ago

This has been my side project for a bit over a year now, working on it nights/weekends (I do Rails consulting full time). I finally thought it was good enough to get out there. There's definitely more I'd like to add to the app, such as shift trades, but I thought it was good enough for an MVP and would love any feedback.

dabeeeenster 15y ago

Signing up: Timezones drop down is not tab-able, and stops at GMT-5?!?! Speaking as a European, this is the sort of thing that really pisses us off!

dabeeeenster 15y ago
Its not clear to me that you have to post a schedule after saving it. I saved 3 before realising I had to post them to avoid losing them.
- jseifer 15y ago
  Schedules that haven't been posted show up under drafts in the "Schedules" section. I think you're right and I need to find a way to make this more obvious.
jseifer 15y ago
Thanks, fixing the sign up tab index issue. I hadn't planned on opening it up outside of the US yet but you convinced me. Deploying that now, thanks!

mgkimsal 15y ago

The majority of places I've worked where schedules were 'posted' and I would 'trade shifts' with someone else have been retail and food service jobs, not 'office' jobs. Yet the signup page only talks about different sizes of offices ('small','medium', etc). Might want to reconsider that wording ("organization"?)

geeksam 15y ago
The last such place I worked was in a relay service call center. It was right smack in the middle of your retail/food service to office/cubicle continuum. But yes, "organization" would work nicely for both. Also: "team".
jseifer 15y ago
I like that wording a lot more and think you're right about that.
- mthoms 15y ago
  As someone who manages a dozen retail employees I concur. I'm using a custom developed Excel/VBA solution but would love to use something web-based. If you are going to target retail business (I think you should) you should keep in mind that most people working retail are young and have other commitments (school, other jobs, etc). For this reason I think having employee-editable "availability" schedules would be a killer feature. edit: I see that you have a "request day off" feature: is it possible to request just a portion of a day off? Think - "I have an exam that morning but can work at noon"
  - jseifer 15y ago
    Yep that's built in though I should probably highlight it more on the tour. There are two possible ways to request time off: - In your profile. These are times that you can never work and they are recurring. You can set yourself to be unavailabile every Monday from 2-4pm, for example. - In the Requests Off section. This section is for one time requests off, as in your exam example.

jswinghammer 15y ago

I'd ditch that green header image you are using. It looks washed out on my machine. Love the concept though. I had to write auto-scheduling software for a call center in college so something like this would probably have broad appeal.

rhizome 15y ago
Bold and/or bigger and a slightly darker gray could make it work. it's the only real color on the page.

stinkytaco 15y ago

Some sort of graphical representation of hours covered would be awesome and I don't see it. That's the hardest thing about scheduling people in public service, making sure there's alway (x) people there. Maybe create a graphical representation of coverage. Also support lunches because that's important for the scheduler to know.

rokhayakebe 15y ago

How do you plan to reach customers? (without giving away your secret sauce) This is a question I will ask every "Review my app" from now on.

jseifer 15y ago
I was planning on doing a bit of online marketing but mostly in person -- brochures, business cards with the app info, phone calls, etc.

bonaldi 15y ago

The hardest part about making a complicated schedule is making sure all the posts are covered. Do I have six editors, four designers, two rewrite, one reader and three runners in on Sunday? And if not, who is available -- they haven't worked six days in a row, aren't due off that day or on vacation and have the right skills -- to cover? When your app can answer this for schedulers you've got something great. Otherwise I fear a spreadsheet is "good enough" and free. Good luck!

jseifer 15y ago
This was a wonderful comment and gave me a lot of ideas for targets to implement. Thanks!
simonsquiff 15y ago
I work for a company that specialises in scheduling software - our main market is healthcare, where this 'do we have the right staff?' question is key. It's a completely different ball game from simple 'this person is doing this' scheduling. You essentially have to understand the demand - not just number of staff of different types, but complex skill requirements; lots of info about supply (staff - their skills and various other bits of info that rules need to know about) and then have a rules engine that matches them together and can check for items like working too long in a row, or too many weekends, or whatever - all parameter driven as every manager wants different things. When you get this right - ie proper 'demand driven' scheduling - this is where the real benefits of scheduling software vs excel or paper come in. Instead of simply answering 'what is everyone doing' you are answering 'do we have the right staff - and if not, what is going wrong?' But a word of warning - it's a nightmare to get your product there. The devil is very much in the detail. If you've modelled the demand as three shifts, but some people fulfil the demand working 12 hour shifts, how do you show that all matched up? How from a ui perspective do you assign shifts in a way that prevents over staffing and understaffing? How can we model the demand in a way that allows for flexibility but isn't a massive pain to create for each schedule? I think you've done a good job of a simple and straightforward scheduling product that is affordable. Be careful about going down the rabbit hole of demand and rule driven scheduling. It sounds like a quick bolt on but actually you need to build it from the ground up with that concept in mind to really make it work. Good luck!

keizo 15y ago

Where can I email bugs/support? looking for an email address, so I can attach video. Thanks.

jseifer 15y ago
Support or bugs go to support@schedulingapp.com. There's a support link in the bottom right of the app as well.

pedalpete 15y ago

I built a similar project last year, but abandoned it due to lack of business. Just around the time I got my beta out, I discovered shiftplanning.com (they were in beta about a month before me) - I would say quality wise, my build was very similar to shiftplanning, much better than schedulefly. The reason I ditched it was that after working with a number of local businesses, I found they always had excuses to not use it. They would say stuff like 'if you can show us our monthly labour costs, then we'll start using it'. But they weren't able to get monthly labour costs the way they used excel, so an online solution would have been better. Another request was holiday scheduling, which I did add, but still, no increase in usage. It was excuse after excuse, so I clearly think this is an area where people recognize a pain, but don't seem to care enough about it. Along with that, my heart was not really in it (I was convinced to build it after mentioning to a friend that it was crazy how businesses were still scheduling with excel and paper, etc.etc.). The problems aren't technical. There are LOTS of scheduling sites. I hadn't seen any of quality until I built mine, and then saw shiftplanning. Your site looks pretty good, but schedulers should be able to select a shift, rather than entering a time, as most businesses have standard shifts for their business, and then need the ability to just edit the time for specific cases, stuff like that. In the end, I'm happy I didn't dedicate too much time to the project. Looking at the compete scores http://siteanalytics.compete.com/schedulefly.com+shiftplanning.com+scheduleanywhere.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/schedulefly.com+shiftplanni..., this just doesn't seem to be an area of interest to businesses. ShiftPlanning is free, and they still can't get a large number of users. The problems are multiple. 1) You can likely only target small businesses or branches of a larger business. I spoke to a few chains, and they all said (surprisingly) that they don't dictate an online schedule service for their outlets. 2) It is an add-on service option for large operations like call-centers,etc which is already offered through their pbx or other systems. One business I spoke to had an add-on which came with their ERP system. 3) along with the groups I mentioned already, here's another 3 http://siteanalytics.compete.com/fendza.com+helloscheduling.com+shiftboard.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/fendza.com+helloscheduling.... some of these guys have been at it a long time. I'll admit that I think most of these are poorly designed, but that can't be the only problem. I don't expect you to read this comment and just give-up. That would be lame. But I do hope to open your eyes a bit, maybe you'll see another opportunity in a related space, or this comment will help you somehow. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

frankydp 15y ago

The market inhibitor for scheduling software/app is usually the mixed needs factor. Offices have very little requirements for scheduling and the product would have to so much "better" than stubby pencil or excel that it is hard to drive usage. On the other hand service industries with volume concerns are so in depth with regards to scheduling that the product must integrate projections and production demands. The problem being that what those two words mean to each company is different. How each company employs the basics of volume projections are not standard. I have spent a decade vetting software and products to make scheduling easier but in the end the main inhibitor to adoption is ease of use. If it isn’t substantially easier to use and just as accurate and communicative as the original practice then adoption is a negative. Sorry for any typos.

ndespres 15y ago

I think you'd benefit from replacing the screenshot of the "my office scheduling" page on the homepage, with an explanatory graphic. The text there is too small to read, but I found myself squinting to make it out to try to glean the features I could expect from the product. As an example, I cite Highrise's homepage: http://highrisehq.com/ http://highrisehq.com/, where icons and descriptive text are used to better present what I can do with the application. I think that having two metrics of plan/pricing levels is confusing. I'd like to purchase by users in my office, but I don't care how many gigabytes of storage space it costs you. It's also not clear exactly what counts towards that storage quota. Will you be tallying the space used by my calendar events in your database? Will there be a feature where I can upload large files to share with appointments? I couldn't find an explanation of why I'd want to pay for storage space anywhere. Once this is defined, maybe an add-on of 'n' gigabytes of addon storage can be purchased for those requiring the additional space- but right now it just appears to be one more thing to confuse someone about to make a purchase.

swalberg 15y ago

I run a payroll site (http://smallpayroll.ca http://smallpayroll.ca). I could see some small businesses that rely on shift work like this, especially if it could push hours into their payroll software. There aren't enough features for a call centre to use it, but I could see convenience stores and restaurants loving it. What's the storage space used for? I looked at the pricing page and the storage per level really stood out. 1GB is a lot, what am I storing? How do I know I have enough storage?

boolean 15y ago

You might prevent the last person removing themselves from the project. After creating a project, I was able to remove myself. The project now has no one to be administered by.

jseifer 15y ago
Thanks a lot for that, I'll add in the validation.

flondon 15y ago

A feature you should strongly think about is around MI functionality. Smaller organisations, who I presume you are targeting, would typically use Excel for their MI needs. If you could automate the generation of pretty and useful MI, perhaps through a dashboard on the site, it would be a great route in. Better still, if you have paying customers how about meeting them and understanding first hand what they would find useful.

Miamlantavegas 15y ago

Good luck man.. it's a tough field to break into. Tons and tons of competitors (like me) and few businesses who would actually use it. - James F. Founder, Fendza.com (http://www.fendza.com http://www.fendza.com)

Miamlantavegas 15y ago
BTW; your site looks good, nice clean design.. I, too, would probably change the screenshot away from Office to something like restaurants, retails stores, etc. Funny thing is; you'll start getting people copying you almost exactly. I found two other 'employee scheduling software' sites that almost directly ripped off my entire website. Anyways, feel free to hit me up if you have any questions about anything.

psenhancer 15y ago

I noticed pedalpete actually mentioned my staff scheduling business (http://www.helloscheduling.com http://www.helloscheduling.com), Hello Scheduling in his compete metrics. A few important things to think about: 1) Those compete metrics are really far off compared to what I am seeing in Google Analytics. 2) You have to remember that Excel and paper schedules are REALLY flexible. If your scheduling software is rigid, people will sign up, but then abandon returning to what feels comfortable to them. Since we launched our application in mid-January 2011, we have consistently had sign ups but then high abandonment. As we've release features that made the product more flexible and addressed more unique scheduling needs, we've seen usage increase. This is a really tough space, but don't lose heart.