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

by jseifer • 15 years ago

33 36 15 years ago

jseifer10• 15 years 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.

dabeeeenster2• 15 years 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!

dabeeeenster2• 15 years 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.

jseifer10• 15 years 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.

jseifer10• 15 years 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• 15 years 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• 15 years 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".

jseifer10• 15 years ago

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

mthoms• 15 years 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"

jswinghammer• 15 years 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• 15 years ago

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

stinkytaco• 15 years 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• 15 years 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.

jseifer10• 15 years 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.

marbletiles• 15 years 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!

jseifer10• 15 years ago

This was a wonderful comment and gave me a lot of ideas for targets to implement. Thanks!

simonsquiff• 15 years 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• 15 years ago

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

jseifer10• 15 years ago

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

pedalpete3• 15 years 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+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.... 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.

jseifer10• 15 years ago

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?

pedalpete3• 15 years ago

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.

ultrasaurus• 15 years ago

I was considering building a scheduling program too, after seeing the paper-posted-on-the-breakroom-wall school of scheduling in action, but I gave up after talking to potential users and buyers who basically said they wouldn't buy it, and they wouldn't use it if it was free.

But I still believe that someday they will switch to something better, so good luck.

rumblestrut• 15 years ago

How long did you work on business development? Could it be you didn't give it enough time to gain legs (not trying to be facetious).

pedalpete3• 15 years ago

Business development was an ongoing process during development for me. I spent about a month in planning, and talking to businesses about their scheduling needs. Then throughout the development process, I'd be talking to businesses and showing off bits and pieces, getting them ready, and getting early feedback.

In the end, this product had a VERY short run. I think it was available to be used for two months.

I personally don't think business development should be begging people to use your product. You should be able to introduce the product, get people interested, help them in getting it set-up, and fill that adoption need. Particularly when it is a task they already do regularly and you're providing a better method, not something completely new.

I also think that a project should be more like a baby deer than a baby human. Deer can walk right out of the womb. They may not walk well, but they stand on their own legs and just need help moving along and with direction etc. If you try to stand your baby up a few times, and just keeps falling, maybe the problem isn't that you haven't given it enough time, maybe you don't realize that it doesn't have legs!

Not being facetious, but I agree some projects need a longer customer adoption cycle, and it is entirely possible that things would have been different if I had given it 6 months or a year. But I would have had difficulty going to a business and selling them the product I had, knowing that there was a free alternative to them that was likely better or at least as good as my offering.

I add to that the fact that the free offering still has nearly 0 traction more than a year later, and I am very pleased with my decision.

If you're really passionate about scheduling and think that is your purpose in life to bring scheduling to the world, great. That isn't my goal. I built it as a business, and I can look back today and see that it doesn't appear anybody else has made a great business out of this market, I doubt I would have been any different.

rufugee• 15 years ago

I don't know. We pay ADP for similar software currently that is completely horrible from a user experience. However, they've got us because of the integration with the rest of our payroll and HR systems.

Jason's site looks extremely well-designed and user-friendly, but I'd wager a lot of companies will require some integration work to really see the benefit.

_wp3r• 15 years 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• 15 years 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/, 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• 15 years ago

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?

boolean• 15 years 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.

jseifer10• 15 years ago

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

flondon• 15 years 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.

Miamlantavegas2• 15 years 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)

Miamlantavegas2• 15 years 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• 15 years ago

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.

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

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