Re: Scheduling Software Whereas we use Vista for Box Office and reservations, we have not ever implemented it for room bookings or resource scheduling (such as docents, floor staff).
Not to say we haven't looked at it, and I believe it could be made to work. But it's far from cheap, and it would not satisfy some of your requirements such as a single resource calendar... For rooms and equipment scheduling we took a chance on a low-end product in 2000 and have been using it ever since. This could also handle personnel as resources, but not as closely bound to events as Vista gives you. You can check out RESCHED from Madgrigal Soft Tools, Victoria, BC. It was $300 then. Everyone can access the calendars, and you can purchase as many 'booking' seats as you like. I think it comes with 10 or 15 booking seats and you can add to that incrementally. I looked at both Vista and Resched very seriously about a year ago (since we had both) for scheduling floor staff, and the VS supervisors ultimately didn't want to go through the steps necessary to set up, maintain, and own their piece of the system . I had to tell them that there have been no recent developments in computer mind-reading, and they stayed with a paper calendar. Resched does have institution-wide event/room calendaring, which can be viewed as a list, or graphically. The month view is pretty compressed and not that useful, but for us, a week's events is pretty viewable on one screen. Once can click on the event in the calendar to expand to the full detail, duration, booker, associated resources, etc. You can also create separate resource groups (docents, rooms, lecture halls, AV) and report out on groups separately. The reports in Resched are fairly simple. It gives you history reports by resource or by client, and total hours or percentage utilization of resources. A pretty nice little system for $300! Chuck Eisenhardt Boston Children's Museum [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [email protected]
