Company Blog - ShiftPlanning.com

11 months ago Ryan Paul Fyfe 0 Comments

Five Ways to Add Employees To ShiftPlanning's Employee Scheduler

Adding employees to ShiftPlanning is an essential part of getting started with the employee scheduling software. You will be able to add employees to the online scheduler by accessing the ‘staff’ tab while logged into the system. Our online scheduling software allows you to add employees the following 5 different ways:

1. Add Employees Manually:
Under the 'Staff' tab, click on Add Employee(s) on the left hand side of the screen. Fill in the details of the Employee e.g. Name, E-mail, Contact details etc., and activate the employees account by leaving the Send Activation checkbox checked.

2. Add Employees by .CSV:
You can use a .csv file to add employees to the scheduler in bulk. In the left menu of the ‘staff tab’ select 'Add Employee(s)'. After that, you will see the normal employee addition screen, with an added link on the left to "Import Employees From:" .csv. With .csv, once you have uploaded your file we try to match your field names against our support field types e.g. email, wage, name, first name, last name, nick name, cell phone, address etc. When you're done for all your fields click 'Add Employees', and we will collect the right data based on the field matches.

3. Add Employees from Facebook
ShiftPlanning integrates with Facebook to allow for single-sign on as well as data syncronization and employee import to the scheduling program. To import employees to the software using Facebook, access the left menu of the ‘staff tab’ and select 'Add Employee(s)'. After that, you will see the normal employee addition screen, with an added link on the left to "Import Employees From:" Facebook. Simply log in and select the contacts that you need.

4. Add Employees from Online Address Books
Sign-in to web-based e-mail accounts to import contacts to the software with the click of a button. To import employees to the app using an online address book, access the left menu of the ‘staff tab’ and select 'Add Employee(s)'. After that, you will see the link on the left to "Import Employees From:" Address Book. We support Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, ICQ Mail, Lycos, Indiatimes, m@il.com, email.it, FastMail and Reddiffmail.

5. Add Employees from Google Apps
Our online scheduling program integrates with Google Apps to allow for login using Google credentials as well as employee import to the scheduler. To import employees to the software using Google Apps, access the left menu of the ‘staff tab’ and select 'Add Employee(s)'. Click the link on the left to "Import Employees From:" Google Apps. Then, log in and select employees to bring into the software.

1 year ago Mathew W. 0 Comments

Time Clock Terminals are now live!

What are clock Terminals?
Online Time Clock Terminals are simplified interfaces that you customize to setup on 'terminal' devices around your workplace soley for the purpose of clocking in/out. Terminals are built-on top of 'locations' so make sure you have them setup first.

How to Create a Terminal
You can create a timeclock terminal within your account under 'Time Clock' -> 'Clock Locations' -> 'Setup New Terminal'

There are a number of options that are available, here are the explanations as well as some previews below:

Name:[:br:]Your terminal name will help you to identify the terminal within your management screen and will also be present on the terminal itself.
Location:[:br:]All terminals must be assigned to a clock location which restricts the online time clock terminal to an individual i.p. address, or computer.
Require Full Employee Login[:br:]If this option is checked employees will be presented with a username/password form to login before they clock in/out.
Show Employees as:[:br:]Here you can either set to show your employees as a select box, or gallery. This allows them to quickly select their name and clock in/out.
Require Password:[:br:]In conjunction with the above fast employee selection you can decide whether or not you will require users to enter their password.
Require Webcam:[:br:]If this option is enabled employees will be required to take a snapshot of themselves before clocking in/out. (Webcam required)

My Terminal is Setup. Now what?
After you have setup your terminal preferences you will see in the list a 'url' that is unique to this specific terminal. You will want to copy and paste that URL to where you want the terminal to be setup to activate it.

What it looks like:

Full Login Required

User Gallery

Select Box

Clock in/Out

A huge thanks to everyone for their patience as well as the steady stream of idea's we received over the last couple months. We're excited to release this functionality, as well as for the possible enhancements that can be made to improve our online time clock even further!

We look forward to hearing your thoughts.

http://www.shiftplanning.com/forums/vie … php?id=656

1 year ago Mathew W. 3 Comments

Customizing your employee login experience

We've just released a few options to our online employee scheduling software that allow you to customize the login options for your staff:

These options should be fairly self-explanatory

It's important to note that these options will only be in affect on your custom ShiftPlanning domain.

1 year ago Mathew W. 1 Comments

Google Calendar copied our Favicon; And it's about time!

A 'Favicon' or 'Favorites Icon' is a small image that is used to represent a webpage within the browser URL / title bar, as well as more commonly for storing alongside Favorites in your browser. As the browser is evolving, and is being used more and more commonly for web-apps, the favicon is becoming an increasingly useful method for communicating information to a user. In particular when you use 'pinned' tabs for your web applications:

Last year we introduced a small, but useful feature to our employee scheduling software: An auto-updating browser Favicon that displays the date of the month vs. the typical static Favicon's that most sites use.

Ironically back in August we called Google Calendar out on their reasoning behind freezing their Favicon on the number '31':

We wrote at the time:

We did a quick look and as far as we know we're the only online scheduling application / Calendar application doing this. Let's wait and see who copies..

Today as a small birthday treat, they released the improved format. In their words:

A birthday wouldn’t be a birthday without a little present, so today we’re happy to announce our latest tiny addition: the up-to-date favicon. When you look at the Google Calendar icon at the top of your browser window, it will no longer always display "31" but will instead change to reflect the current day of the month. Today’s date is now always a short glance away. view source

As a daily user of Google Calendar, I welcome the improvement. Thanks for reading.

1 year ago Ryan Paul Fyfe 4 Comments

ShiftPlanning takes home the Silver in Employee Scheduling Software!

[:img src="http://www.toptenreviews.com/i/silver-awd-2011.gif" align="right":]We are excited to share with you are recent Silver Award from TopTenREVIEWS in the Employee Scheduling Software category.

We feel the review did a great job summarizing up our offering minus a couple things they missed - such as the ability to assign employees to different divisions/locations.

We're currently working internally on a brand-new account setup, and scheduling process which will help bring some of these features into play right from the start. Here is their summary:

We found ShiftPlanning to be an extremely noteworthy scheduling tool. It may not have offered every feature out there, but they certainly had some unique capabilities we didn’t see elsewhere. This product is easily scalable, so long as you’re able to handle being without an auto-scheduling function. We felt it had a solid feature offering in addition to some extra features they simply threw in as an added bonus to subscribers. If you’re looking for a powerful, cost-effective solution, this is an excellent resource to consider.

Click Here for the Full Review

1 year ago Ryan Paul Fyfe 0 Comments

Billing Update - Recurring Billing now Functional

Dear ShiftPlanning Account Holders,

Last night it came to our attention that several accounts were past-due on their payments. For some of you this was because you had setup recurring billing with PayPal (which unfortunately didn't go through), and for others it was because you just hadn't gotten around to setting up your payment yet

[:img src="http://cdn.spgrab.com/aeug.png" align="right":]This morning we sent out notices to all accounts explaining this issue, and I would like to explain it again here, as well as let you know that the issue with the recurring billing has been resolved, so you are now free to set that up from within your account.

What you should know:

For Non-Profits:
Your accounts are still free. Please contact us at info@shiftplanni!
ng.com, if we haven't yet confirmed your account as a non-profit. We will guide you through the process to getting confirmed via e-mail.
I setup Recurring Billing before. Will I be double Charged?
No. Recurring payments that went through before, were simply set to a single month payment. Your account was credited for this month, and you can view the receipt from within your account (Admin->Invoices).
I made a payment but my account still shows outstanding
If you're account was more than 30 days over-due, a single-month payment won't be enough to bring your account back to active. From your Billing overview page you'll be able to see the details of when your account is paid up until. We recommend submitting a payment to bring your account up to active; and then setting up recurring billing so this is on auto-pilot for you. You can also take advantage of our large discount for billing multiple months in advance.

If any of these changes have caused any problems for you please accept our apologies in advance, and contact us at your earliest convenience so we can assist you through this process.

1 year ago Mathew W. 0 Comments

Updated method for viewing multiple employee schedules at once

A couple of months ago we released the ability for you to easily view multiple schedules at once. Unfortunately the way that we initially released this functionality for a number of accounts that didn't want this to be the default functionality. Alongside the location support we've updated the way that schedule selection works within the ShiftPlanning employee scheduler:

View all Schedules for a specific location[:img src="http://cdn.spgrab.com/12_08_11_06_18_22.png" align="right":]
You can now click on the location name to easily select a schedule overview for that individual location:

View Multiple Schedules[:img src="http://cdn.spgrab.com/12_08_11_06_10_18.png" align="right":]
To view multiple schedules at once you need to check the little boxes besides the every schedule name. It is allowing you to add those schedules together to view them at the same time

Please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions. Thanks to everyone that expressed their opinions; You're constructive criticism is appreciated and goes along way to help us to continue to improve our application.

1 year ago Mathew W. 0 Comments

Scheduling Employees in Multiple Locations / Divisions

ShiftPlanning now has support for businesses that schedule employees and shifts at multiple locations, or within multiple divisions at a single location. Up until now accounts have been using a workaround, which worked, but isn't quite as elegant as what is available now.

Location Types
Locations can be setup in two types:

Primary locations are typically physical locations where your business has operations. Schedules are assigned to Primary Locations.
Secondary locations are for setting locations to individual shifts and events outside the normal primary location(s).

Setting up Locations
Adminstrator's can setup locations by clicking on the 'Admin' tab within their ShiftPlanning account, and then selecting the new 'Locations' option in the left panel. Locations are easy to setup; All you need to provide is the type (see above), name & address. You can even drag and drop a pin around on a map to set your location exactly to where you need it.

Here's what it looks like:

Assigning Schedules to Locations
Assign each of your schedules to a location from the schedule management screen: (Schedule -> 'Edit')

Assigning Staff to Locations
Each staff member can be assigned to one primary location, as well as assigned to individual schedules across all locations on your account:

Assigning Shifts to Locations
Shifts are automatically assigned to the primary location for the schedule that they are on; They can also be individually assigned to a secondary location for scheduling outside of the norm. Access the location support from the Advanced Shift Edit:

Note: Locations will be saved for future use

Mapping / Directions
Once schedules/shifts are assigned to a location mapping is available for staff members both from within their account, as well as in e-mail notifications(see below). From this same window you can also access print / direction friendly versions of your schedule. Remember - In order for the directions functionality to work correctly you will need to have your employee profile up-to-date with your address.

Notifications
Alongside all shifts notifications you'll see the address, as well as quick links to view/print a map, as well as get turn by turn directions to the shift location.

1 year ago Mathew W. 1 Comments

Publish/Draft Employee Scheduling - Happy Valentine's Day!

[:img src="http://cdn.shiftplanning.com/layout/images/logo_valentinesday.png" align="right":]Although it is just by co-incidence that we're releasing our publish/draft scheduling method on Valentine's Day, given the popularity of this request, the timing does fit rather well

The publish/draft scheduling format allows you to work in the way you have been for years - in privacy on your schedules until they're ready to be posted (published) for your staff to see. ShiftPlanning will even take care of sending the latest work schedule to your staff, as well as keeping them up-to-date when changes are made to a previously published schedule.

We've tried to integrate this new functionality into the existing architecture as cleanly as possible, and as this is a new feature we'll be working rapidly on improvements over the coming weeks. Here is a step-by-step guide to switching your existing ShiftPlanning employee scheduling account over to the new format (all new accounts will default to this mode):

Enable Draft/Publish
Edit your schedule settings under 'Admin'->'Edit Settings' to enable the format:

You will be prompted with a reminder to let you know that we will automatically 'publish' all of your existing shifts. We won't send notices to your staff, we'll simply make the change internally to set them as published:

Schedule Status
No matter what view-mode you're in we'll provide you with a real-time update of the 'published status' of that schedule(s). Essentially we take a look at every shift displayed in your current view to determine the status between:

Past
Shifts that have already happened in the past are considered past shifts and aren't used for publishing, as essentially historical data, is just that, and is always available through our web-interface.
Draft
Shifts on this schedule have never been published before, and as such are not visible to staff.
Published
Shifts on this schedule have all been published, are viewable by staff, and all employees have been notified that the schedule is live (provided they haven't disabled notifications for when schedules are published).
Republish
Changes have been made to shift(s) on this schedule, and it needs to be republished. Republishing a schedule will again make the shifts visible to staff, as well as notify those employees affected by the changes to make sure that everyone is up-to-date with the latest changes (provided they haven't disabled notifications for when schedules are republished).

Example work-flow
For a quick demonstration of how the draft/publish method works I created two shifts next week, each with one employee:

My schedule is now ready to be published, so I click on the publish link at the top, and confirm in the dialog:

Immediately you'll notice how the shifts have changed and now show as published with the 'lock' symbol, as well as the schedule status has changed to 'published':

Both employees were also notified that the schedule is posted (also making these shifts visible through the web-interface):

As an example let's make a change to one of the shifts:

You'll notice both that the lock icon now is shown as 'unlocked' meaning that the schedule hasn't been republished since the changes were made. You'll now have the option to 'Republish':

We look at all the shifts in the current schedule view and analyze which employee have been affected by the changes and we only notify them that changes have been made to a previously published schedule:

If you have any suggestions/comments/questions on this new functionality we would love to hear from you. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post this is new functionality within the application that we're releasing with 'Beta' attached to it. We've done this, as we want to communicate with you that this is new functionality that will be under development to improve/fix any bugs over the coming weeks/months. (You'll notice that we lifted the Beta notice from the Online Time Clock with this release as well).

1 year ago Ryan Paul Fyfe 0 Comments

Upcoming Scheduled Maintenance - February 14th 12am-1am EST

Our development team has been busy, and over the next few weeks we're going to be releasing a ton of highly expected features. All of these main features require short maintenance windows as they require large internal updates.

We've tried to pick a time that would affect as few users as possible as well as to group as many changes together for release at the same time. Here are a few of the most frequently asked questions:

How Long will you be down for?
We'll be offline between 12am-1am EST on Monday, February 14th.

Will any of my data be affected?
Rest assured that all of your data is safe, and will be just the way you left it when we go back online.

What are you guys working on?
Alongside a ton of small interface tweaks/improvements we have the long awaited draft/published schedule method to implement. This functionality comes alongside a new notifications module that will greatly improve how you communicate posted schedules (and subsequent changes) to your staff.

Who can I contact for more information?
Feel free to contact our team at info@shiftplanning.com at anytime if you have any questions.

Your patience and understanding is appreciated during this process!