
Ask HN: Please review my app: Scheduling (employee scheduling software) - jseifer
http://schedulingapp.com
======
jseifer
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.

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mgkimsal
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"?)

~~~
jseifer
I like that wording a lot more and think you're right about that.

~~~
mthoms
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
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.

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bonaldi
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!

~~~
simonsquiff
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!

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ndespres
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/>, 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.

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frankydp
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.

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psenhancer
I noticed pedalpete actually mentioned my staff scheduling business
(<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.

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swalberg
I run a payroll site (<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?

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stinkytaco
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.

------
pedalpete
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+shiftplanni...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/schedulefly.com+shiftplanning.com+scheduleanywhere.com/),
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....](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/fendza.com+helloscheduling.com+shiftboard.com/)
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.

~~~
jseifer
Thanks a lot for the thoughtful response. I do have some questions for you.

\- How did you market it?

\- You said you talked to local businesses and chains. What did you do to get
to them? What was most effective?

\- Are there any marketing avenues you think should be avoided?

\- Are there any features which you found to be not worth it? I'm keeping it
simple for now but would appreciate knowing where not to take it.

\- What finally made you decide to abandon it? What did you do with your
customers?

~~~
pedalpete
As I mentioned, I was in closed beta. I never did a full release, my marketing
was limited to people I spoke with, people I know who own/manage businesses
with scheduling needs.

The number of people I spoke to who said 'that's GREAT!!! I want that for my
company' was probably 20. Of course, I had mentioned it to probably 100 people
but most aren't in a position where they really care or do staff scheduling.
About 5 people who manage staff said they had no interest, reasons they gave
where that they don't like/trust/need computers to do it, or that there
schedules were so simple it wasn't necessary.

I did an initial slow beta release to 5 companies, 3 tried the service. After
three weeks 0 were making schedules. I spoke to them about the changes that
needed to be made, what they would like to see, and got a bunch of feedback,
but nothing really actionable, as I had mentioned (or nothing that would
actually have made a difference I believe).

I then sent emails inviting other businesses to use the service. I can't
remember the exact numbers or responses. It wasn't high. They looked, a few
signed-up and said they'd get there supervisors to look at it. A few weeks
later, again, nobody was using it to build their schedules. Another round of
calls, coffees to discuss what was needed, etc. lots of responses like 'when
this supervisor gets back we'll start using it', 'we're just changing this',
'we need time to do x', etc. etc. It took a bit of time on my part to realize
these were just excuses to not use the service. If I'd filled the need, they'd
have used it.

Of course, you could say 'well maybe your product sucked'. Fair enough. Maybe
it did, but I'll tell you that it was a whole lot better than most of the
stuff out there. As I'm sure you know, there are lots of scheduling sites that
are almost impossible to make heads or tails of due to poor UI and design. I'm
not a great designer and a friend did a bit of design for me, but I'm pretty
good at UI, and this was pretty simple to use. It worked, just nobody cared.

Speaking to local businesses I found was easy, and in my research, I had
spoken to a bunch of businesses about how they do their scheduling so I
understood their needs before I started building. Then I figured it was just a
matter of getting a product out there and tweaking it and adding features
based on feedback.

I know a few people who work for large chains in IT or other management
capacity, so that was my in with the chains.

I would say in the end I found all features not worth it ;) but I too started
fairly slowly. I'm trying to remember all the features it had. It wasn't SUPER
feature heavy. The feature list that I remember was

1) add employees

2) employee types (manager, scheduler, staff)

3) create template shifts (one click to add a shift to the schedule instead of
selecting start/end-times each time.

4) add shift to schedule

5) add shift request

6) request time off

7) employee payroll accounting

8) calculate over-time

9) publish schedule/send-emails, etc. etc.

10) holiday planning (as requested by a business)

The decision to abandon it was mostly made for me. 0 for 25 is not a good
record, particularly when you have a personal relationship with most of those
businesses.

I actually made a little test to see what would happen. I made sure that no
schedules had been made for the upcoming week, and I just shutdown the site.

I figured if people noticed and wanted to know what happened to the site and
wanted the service, they would ask. Of course, I mean the people who had
already seen it and new about it. Nobody asked, nobody knew it went away,
nobody cared.

I contrast that with another site I shutdown late last year, and I still get
emails from people asking me to bring it back, or what happened to it,
thanking me for building it, etc. etc.

I know I'm quick to make decisions on these sorts of things, but as I
mentioned before, my heart wasn't in it, and it seemed that customers weren't
passionate and didn't feel the pain.

The decision to abandon ship was made when I considered the alternatives
businesses had (including a free competitor in the space with a decent
product), and the impact I felt my product could make.

I didn't do anything with my customers. I hadn't charged them (actually I
didn't build a billing system as that would have been an extra charge up front
that I wasn't willing to invest in until I had enough paying customers to make
it profitable). The businesses are all still doing there schedules as they
always had I assume.

I've worked for a few start-ups now both as a programmer and in other biz-dev,
product management capacities, etc. etc. along with my own personal projects.
There is a certain feeling I think you get when launching a product that has
some traction, even if only minor. There is a buzz about it, and people get
talking about it. So I guess in the end, a big part of my abandon decision was
that this just didn't have that 'GO!' energy to it and I didn't have the
rocketfuel for the project.

The great thing I take away from these sorts of projects is that there is no
shortage of great things to be done, problems to be solved and opportunities.

------
dabeeeenster
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
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
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.

------
boolean
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
Thanks a lot for that, I'll add in the validation.

------
flondon
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.

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

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

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

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

------
Miamlantavegas
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>)

~~~
Miamlantavegas
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.

