Sling

Avantages

The mobile app is what makes this package great. My employees love the push notifications when new shifts are posted.

We have a variable schedule and a student workforce. Our MO is to post available shifts when we need people to work. Sling! lets our students apply for as many or as few shifts as they like. We can then approve individuals to put our team for the day together based on the skills of those who have applied and the needs of the tasks at hand.

Inconvénients

There is no view available that visually groups like time blocks into shifts.

Our shifts don't follow a set schedule, but we often need more than one person to work the same time block on a given day. There are now several features to help you save time when scheduling things like this. For example, you can copy shifts to avoid having to enter all of the same details multiple times, and you can select several different positions when creating a shift, but once created, each person shows up as their own event on the schedule.

If I've got a half dozen different people working for each of four different time blocks on a single day, the calendar starts to get a little overwhelming with 24 separate events represented. If there was a way to group like time blocks into shifts with multiple employees assigned, this example would be down to 4 separate events, which is much easier to quickly get your head around.

Avantages

So many 'Pros'!! --
- supports multiple work sites/locations.
- supports different employee roles/titles.
- supports large (unlimited?) number of employees.
- can 'deactivate' employees & then reinstate them at a later date (no need to delete the employee's entire profile).
- There are even more 'Pros' that we haven't fully explored yet, such as employees communicating with each other through the app to arrange shift swaps, etc. So much potential!!

I work at a college Math Learning Center where we provide additional assistance to students seeking extra math support. Having a scheduling app/software that can manage many employees with atypical/changing/unusual shifts is crucial!! We employ both full-time permanent staff and temporary students tutors and with our temporary staff we have a lot of turnover as students come-and-go. Thus we have changes to the schedule constantly. So for us, a dynamic system is a must.

The Sling support staff is also very responsive and open to suggestions and ideas. Some of my suggestions have been incorporated, such as being able to included a 'break' duration for a shift which then is subtracted from the shift hour total. These changes have made Sling even more useful! I am so thrilled to have found this FREE scheduling web application. We don't have the budget to pay for a scheduling software/app, yet we needed a tool that could handle our very specific and complicated needs. We found it in Sling!!

Inconvénients

- Would like to be able to add more details about each employee, such as customized checkboxes for employee 'expertise'. (There is a 'notes' section for each employee profile, which is nice.)
- Be able to make tags/notes for certain dates, such as 'holiday' or 'extended day' to remind the scheduler of different scheduling needs.
- Have a shift-responsibilities designation option, such as 'Opener' or 'Closer'
- Would like to be able to 'collapse' some of the hours from view and/or designate a viewing window that shows only when our center is open (must be unique by location). Though being able to schedule shifts beyond 'operating hours' is needed (set-up, take-down time) but many hours before and after our operating hours don't need to be displayed.
- Would like there to be a way to designate general staff 'types' (i.e. permanent vs temporary) not just different employee position. A Permanent staff member had additional responsibilities and must be staffed at all times, so being able to look at the shifts of just Permanent staff would be beneficial.
- More customizable options for the print-view.

All these cons, if addressed, would just be icing on the cake. The app, as it is now, is completely functional and covers all the necessities and more!

Avantages

Very easy to use, lots of view options and adjustments, fairly clean interface, amazing features for free.

Amazing that you can drag and drop, use keyboard shortcuts to copy shifts. UI is fairly full featured!

Mobile apps are great, notifications are amazing.

Inconvénients

We have multiple managers using Sling, and one annoyance is that we can't see each other's unpublished shifts. We end up using each other's accounts to see and adjust shifts.

The messaging app seems like it would work really well, but we already use another way to communicate (Slack, FB messenger, WhatsApp are all viable and free). Same goes with Tasks and Newsfeed. I would've preferred the Clock in/out as an included feature over Tasks, Messages, and Newsfeed. Beggers can't be choosers though!

I tried to contact Sling for interfaces, but got no response. Would like to know some of the interfaces they've already developed to be in the Premium prices.

Avantages

My company uses the free version of Sling, and for something that is cost free it's really wonderful. It's easy to navigate, and the messaging system has come in handy for us when our main method of communication (Slack) is down. We've tried several other paid and unpaid employee scheduling programs, and Sling has been the best one by far.

Inconvénients

The only issue we have is that despite how many times we click "publish all future shifts", we still have to publish each new weeks shifts so that everyone can see. This is a very minor inconvenience though, as it's easy to quickly publish shifts.

Avantages

Love this products ease of use and ability to manage a large team schedule.
Allos you to code people for different positions, set recurring shift times and even has a group chat to easily send out team notifications ect.
Send each person's schedule directly to their phone. Great for managing a younger demographic.

Inconvénients

There is no way for the team member to post a shift for coverage, everything has to be done by the manager (this could also be a pro, depending on what your looking for)