The official weblog of ClickBook.net. ClickBook streamlines the process of appointment scheduling for small business, schools and other organisations. For technical updates please visit the Technical Blog.

Taking Care of "Busyness"

Mark Demicoli  26 June 2013 05:58:17 PM
It's often difficult to guess how busy a staff member is just by looking at how many appointments they have in a day.  While bringing up the Appointment Sheet can give a good visual indication, we decided to add a feature that allows you to see how busy everyone is with just a glance.

As Matt from Heart In Hand Massage suggested, it would be wonderful to quickly see who's working on a particular day, especially when you need to book two therapists for a single service.

The new feature not only shows you who is working on a particular day, it shows how busy they are in percentage terms. ClickBook does this by calculating the combination of their Normal Availability and any Available TimeBlocks, then subtracting any bookings and Not-Available TimeBlocks, to give a true indication of 'busy-ness' or availability.

If a Staff Member is not available (ie not 'in the office at all'), "N/A" is displayed.

What do you think?
Comments

1Matthew Shane St Germain Donnelly RN LMT  07/10/13 8:50:56 AM  Busyness Tracker

The reason behind the idea stems from the need to see availability of the whole staff to schedule last minute clients. Knowing that a therapist in N/A, 50% or 98% full allows me to coordinate new clients a actually make the less busy therapists more productive. In a volunteer workforce, it would, I imaging, also serve to show who is being utilized at a glance and how much time is being filled. If your organization isn't using specific names, but has created "spaces" in the schedule, you would be able to see what % of those are being used. My office needs more precise information. We have 9 therapists available 6 of whom use the book. We offer treatments that involve 2 therapists at a time and need to coordinate across space as well. So the more specific the information I can get, the better and more quickly I can manage the therapist time and space.

2Anthony Reyna  10/07/13 5:37:25 AM  Busyness Tracker

IT oriented people may support it as "another tool with which to work". Others may be neutral or deem it as "unnecessary detail" with limited value, taking into consideration scheduled appointments where the client does not show up and does not cancel. Also, what is gained by tracking "busyness" of a volunteer force? Some may miscontrue process as micromanaging.

3Matthew Shane St Germain Donnelly RN LMT  28/06/13 12:08:30 PM  Untitled

Thanks for the "Busyness Tracker"...It actually has been handy as designed...but ...:)

More to come (?)

4Andy Hall  27/06/13 9:35:27 AM  Busyness

Mark, this is a fantastic development, especially with the bugs ironed out!

If we could add a location from which each staff member, it would make everything even more transparent.

We love your work. Keep it up!

5Damian Maynard  27/06/13 5:39:08 AM  Busyness

Brilliant idea! It's also giving other staff members targets to beat now too!! Keep the improvements coming :)

6Nicole Ferguson  26/06/13 8:49:10 PM  busy-ness

love it, very handy, this has always been something we have wanted and a difficulty forums to work without :-)