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​I am actually kind of fascinated by this...especially since we have a total of 6 staff members, all of whom handle specialized areas, i.e. collections, historical content, library archives, education/outreach. I think the most challenging part of my job is not having support staff to spread the wealth of educational groups around based on scheduling. Would this work if there are other employees within a museum's parent company who would like to get involved with a museum's educational programs?
We are currently evaluating many aspects of our engagement practices going into 2018 so this concept happens to come up, it would be great to hear more about this type of software and how it is used by other museums.

Thanks!

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Kim Gianetti
Manager, Education & Outreach
U.S. Golf Association Museum
Far Hills NJ
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I am also interested in hearing from others on this topic. We are a 361 days/year operation that relies on 15-20 part-time interpreters conducting our front line services and engagement. All of which, have varying availability and trained to facilitate different programs planetarium shows, and workshops. 

Are staff are required to maintain a minimum of 16 hours availability, but generally work between 24-29 hours/week, as mandated through our governing board and fulfilled through internal department procedures.  We also send the schedule out 2 weeks in advance, which also requires our schools booking field trips to do so 2 weeks prior to their ideal visit date. We currently use pretty much nothing other than Excel to format the look of the schedule and to tally individual staff hours per week. 

All examples or models welcome!

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Megan Osetek
Coordinator of Interpretation
Kalamazoo Valley Museum
Kalamazoo MI
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Original Message:
Sent: 09-27-2017 08:36 AM
From: Kim Gianetti
Subject: Staff scheduling software

​I am actually kind of fascinated by this...especially since we have a total of 6 staff members, all of whom handle specialized areas, i.e. collections, historical content, library archives, education/outreach. I think the most challenging part of my job is not having support staff to spread the wealth of educational groups around based on scheduling. Would this work if there are other employees within a museum's parent company who would like to get involved with a museum's educational programs?
We are currently evaluating many aspects of our engagement practices going into 2018 so this concept happens to come up, it would be great to hear more about this type of software and how it is used by other museums.

Thanks!

------------------------------
Kim Gianetti
Manager, Education & Outreach
U.S. Golf Association Museum
Far Hills NJ
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Speaking from the perspective of the one being "scheduled" we have used Deputy (https://www.deputy.com/). It really nice program. From a employee's perspective, I like that it has a mobile app. It also allows you to switch shifts and put up your unavailability. It think you can also use it to have your employees clock in/out. You can also assign tasks. Talk to Jennifer Hoesing, Executive Director of the Stockyards Ag Experience if it is good program from a manager's perspective. (605)-332-1917 or stockyardsagexperience@gmail.com.

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Jakob Etrheim
Lead Visitor Services Associate
Stockyards Ag Experience
Sioux Falls, SD
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Hello,

For the past 3 years, we have used WhenToWork to schedule various frontline teams at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. Our Guest Services managers schedule approximately 75 part-time team members and I schedule 55 PT educators/interpreters. WhenToWork allows for there to be multiple manager roles and their respective teams are separate. Each staff member has his/her own profile login. It is a web-based platform, but is accessible from anywhere and has a robust enough mobile app. It allows for you to create/load saved templates and can schedule out as far as you're able to go based on employee's input availability. There's a trade board where team members can trade/drop shifts and managers can set restrictions on when/if this can happen or if it requires manager approval.

The company has been responsive to various suggestions over the years regarding new ways to view/sort information, input info/schedules, etc...


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Thomas Close
Gallery Experience Manager
Perot Museum of Nature and Science
Dallas TX
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I should also add that our our School Programs team uses Artifax for their team scheduling because it does allow them to import booked programs from our CRM.

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Thomas Close
Gallery Experience Manager
Perot Museum of Nature and Science
Dallas TX
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Original Message:
Sent: 09-28-2017 08:27 AM
From: Thomas Close
Subject: Staff scheduling software

Hello,

For the past 3 years, we have used WhenToWork to schedule various frontline teams at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. Our Guest Services managers schedule approximately 75 part-time team members and I schedule 55 PT educators/interpreters. WhenToWork allows for there to be multiple manager roles and their respective teams are separate. Each staff member has his/her own profile login. It is a web-based platform, but is accessible from anywhere and has a robust enough mobile app. It allows for you to create/load saved templates and can schedule out as far as you're able to go based on employee's input availability. There's a trade board where team members can trade/drop shifts and managers can set restrictions on when/if this can happen or if it requires manager approval.

The company has been responsive to various suggestions over the years regarding new ways to view/sort information, input info/schedules, etc...


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Thomas Close
Gallery Experience Manager
Perot Museum of Nature and Science
Dallas TX
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In my past life at a science center, I scheduled about 30 part time educators, each of which knew different programs and had different availability needs- similar to what Megan at Kalamazoo describes. We started in Excel, tried a program called "Time Forge", went back to Excel, and ultimately settled on a program called "When I Work", though that implementation happened after I transitioned out of the scheduling role.

Some of the biggest benefits of both Time Forge, and When I Work, was the ability of team to get their schedules on mobile, get reminder texts of their shifts, offer up shift trades with manager approval, etc. I found the challenge to be that any of the auto-scheduling options weren't powerful enough to deal with the complexities of our scheduling- it couldn't know that "if Suzie Q is the only one who knows this show, she can't also be the only person scheduled who knows this other one, because they run concurrently", for example. So I still had to manually build the schedule within the program- it was just a lot more user friendly when done.

At this point they use When I Work, and I think they still have that problem- the team knowledge is kept in a separate Access database and the two just can't talk to each other. There are some options, like assigning different roles, that could help with training levels, but I never quite got it to do what I wanted. But otherwise the program allows a lot of options and benefits for the team that emailing an Excel document never had. I liked it a lot from a user standpoint. Most of those programs have a cost that needs to be balanced- some are a flat rate, and some are on a per-employee basis. As with anything, the programs that have free versions don't have some of the benefits and tools available to paid versions.

In my current life I use Excel, because I have 6 team members and the knowledge base is very level, so it's pretty straightforward.

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Christina Beargie
Unit Manager
Ohio History Center - Ohio History Connection
Columbus OH
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Original Message:
Sent: 09-28-2017 08:29 AM
From: Thomas Close
Subject: Staff scheduling software

I should also add that our our School Programs team uses Artifax for their team scheduling because it does allow them to import booked programs from our CRM.

------------------------------
Thomas Close
Gallery Experience Manager
Perot Museum of Nature and Science
Dallas TX
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 09-28-2017 08:27 AM
From: Thomas Close
Subject: Staff scheduling software

Hello,

For the past 3 years, we have used WhenToWork to schedule various frontline teams at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. Our Guest Services managers schedule approximately 75 part-time team members and I schedule 55 PT educators/interpreters. WhenToWork allows for there to be multiple manager roles and their respective teams are separate. Each staff member has his/her own profile login. It is a web-based platform, but is accessible from anywhere and has a robust enough mobile app. It allows for you to create/load saved templates and can schedule out as far as you're able to go based on employee's input availability. There's a trade board where team members can trade/drop shifts and managers can set restrictions on when/if this can happen or if it requires manager approval.

The company has been responsive to various suggestions over the years regarding new ways to view/sort information, input info/schedules, etc...


------------------------------
Thomas Close
Gallery Experience Manager
Perot Museum of Nature and Science
Dallas TX

Hello, I'm a part time Educator/Performer in a fairly large department that staffs all of our gallery programs, classroom programs for field trips, outreach for schools/community events, etc. We have folks that are 3/4 and full time, part time, and occasional (subs). As you can imagine, there are a lot of moving pieces and the administrative side of scheduling our department is fairly time consuming. But, we use a program called workschedule.net. I can't speak for the administrative side of things, but as an employee, this is a pretty easy program to use. There's an app for it (kind of clunky), but the website is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. It's fairly self explanatory. I can check my schedule, the schedule of my peers, or look ahead to sign up for special shifts, and I can submit time off requests through this program. I hope this helps. Good luck! Here's the link: http://www.workschedule.net

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Amber Parham
Museum Educator/Performer
Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Denver CO
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We use a program called Schedule Fusion, which we actually helped develop because I couldn't find another software that worked for our institution. It allows us to basically create any resource category (staff, rooms, equipment) and then list whatever staff, rooms, equipment or any other resource that is unique to our <g class="gr_ gr_330 gr-alert gr_spell gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim ContextualSpelling ins-del" id="330" data-gr-id="330">org</g>. We add events to the master calendar and select whatever resources we need. The staff members requested get an email notification. It also checks for conflicts, if two people have requested the same speaker, or all three of our projectors are already in use, it will catch it so there are no last minute issues with two departments fighting over one resource. The developer that I worked with can customize it to any organization and I highly recommend it. It's definitely helped to organize us at The Society of the Four Arts. I love that it can be used as a staff scheduler and a resource scheduler, so we aren't maintaining too many calendars. <g class="gr_ gr_1616 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Punctuation only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="1616" data-gr-id="1616">Definitely</g> saves a few steps. 

Product Features

Schedule Fusion		remove preview
Product Features Schedule Fusion's features can be divided into two primary areas: resource administration and event creation/navigation. The former provides the ability to manage and edit individual resources, locations, program categories (groups of resources), resource types, and user management. The latter provides your primary calendar dashboards and the ability to create/edit events. View this on Schedule Fusion >

Drew, the guy I worked with is super nice and very dependable. Good luck, I hope this helps!

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Katie Edwards
Director of Communications
The Society of the Four Arts
Palm Beach FL
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Original Message:
Sent: 09-28-2017 09:29 AM
From: Amber Parham
Subject: Staff scheduling software

Hello, I'm a part time Educator/Performer in a fairly large department that staffs all of our gallery programs, classroom programs for field trips, outreach for schools/community events, etc. We have folks that are 3/4 and full time, part time, and occasional (subs). As you can imagine, there are a lot of moving pieces and the administrative side of scheduling our department is fairly time consuming. But, we use a program called workschedule.net. I can't speak for the administrative side of things, but as an employee, this is a pretty easy program to use. There's an app for it (kind of clunky), but the website is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. It's fairly self explanatory. I can check my schedule, the schedule of my peers, or look ahead to sign up for special shifts, and I can submit time off requests through this program. I hope this helps. Good luck! Here's the link: http://www.workschedule.net

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Amber Parham
Museum Educator/Performer
Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Denver CO
------------------------------

I no longer work in a position where I am scheduling a large group of interpreters and educators, but when I worked at the Nantucket Historical Association, we used WhenToWork, and it was great. Depending on the season, we scheduled between 10-50 part time staff members for 2-20 shifts a day. Thomas did a great job summing up the software, but there are a couple of other things worth noting:

• You can create separate teams, but if you have people who overlap (such as someone who does both visitor services and education positions) you don't need to input them twice--you can easily merge the multiple schedules and add the different shift types across teams.
• The software will auto-populate a schedule based on listed availability, but it is still very intuitive for hand-selecting shifts.
• If you do not want your staff to be able to trade/drop shifts at all, you can hide that functionality, which we found very helpful.
• What our educators and interpreters probably liked best was that you can put the staff member's level of preference for certain programs so that when you auto-populate the schedule they'll be less likely to be scheduled for their least favorite programs and more likely to be scheduled for their favorite programs. It was also a helpful way for managers to keep track of who was best suited for certain programs, which can of course be challenging to remember otherwise.

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Claire White
Educational Programs Manager
The Mob Museum- National Museum of Organized Crime & Law Enforcement
Las Vegas NV
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I'd recommend looking into shiftboard.com.  That's what we use and I haven't seen in mentioned yet.  Cost is $125/month but well worth it.

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Jeff Williams
Associate Director, Technology
Hammer Museum
Los Angeles CA
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