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CNET Editors' review
Designed for church personnel, this complex program offers the tools to help you create and manage church schedules. Because of the various events, people, and other things it tracks, setup may take some time, and less experienced users might be overwhelmed by the program's busy interface. We also found some problems for those running Vista on their computers.
The program's main interface is busy and little has been done to dress up this database-driven program. On first run, a menu gives you the option of creating a new file with or without the help of a wizard. Some testers using Vista reported that the wizard didn't appear for them regardless of which method was chosen. They also received a pop-up window that revealed that the Help feature isn't supported by Vista. For a simpler program, that might be fine, but SmartRoster involves setting up four main areas to come up with the desired roster: People, Schedules, Events, and Roles. Without guidance, less experienced users could be overwhelmed with the setup. For those on other operating systems, the wizard and Help file make the process easier, but it will still take time to get all of the necessary information added to make an accurate roster. For example, there are seven tabs for the various types of data you can capture for a single individual in the People section. Information ranges from contact details like address and phone to specifying a person's roles in the church.
You have 30 days to give SmartRoster a try, and while this is the standard trial period, those new to scheduling programs might not find this to be enough time to fully get the hang of this app. We recommend this program for those who have experience working with database programs and are willing to put in the time getting it set up.
Publisher's Description
From Davallia Technology:
Smartroster is the best new way to create personnel schedules for churches, non-profit and commercial organisations. First define your events and roles, add your people and specify when and how they wish to participate by nominating their events, roles, availability/absences, and work association preferences. Then set the period you wish to schedule and hit the AutoFill button to create the schedule. SmartRoster will cycle through many different schedules and automatically choose the best one, balancing the workload as evenly and fairly as possible, while respecting work association preferences. You can schedule completely manually, using the drag-and-drop interface, completely automatically, or any combination in between. SmartRoster offers a number of features to make sure people get their schedule, and remember when they are on duty, such as individualised reports, direct email to your volunteers, and automated email reminders. SmartRoster eliminates clashes and mistakes. It maintains a knowledge-base about your people, their skills, absences and work constraints, as well as your organisations requirements.
What's new in this version: Version 3.8 added word reports now work with vb script files.
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All versions:
3.7 starsout of 3 votes
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Current version:
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Results 1-3 of 3
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"Life saver for those who plan a lot of volunteers"
Version: SmartRoster 3.501
Pros
Excellent to schedule volunteers for multiple ministries at once.
This task used to take a one person 5 days a month. Right now it is reduced to probably 30 minutes tops.Cons
It can be a bit overwhelming to get started with this, however, once setup you will love it, and never depart from it.
Summary
Set up your recurring events, setup the volunteers and how often they would like to volunteer, and the system does almost the rest.
Take a look at it, like I said, in the beginning a bit overwhelming. Documentation is good, and the support is fast and great.
Give it a try! -
"Absolutely Fantastic - and I tried 20 others..."
Version: SmartRoster 3.501
Pros
auto-gen schedules
handles very complex associations
custom/flexible reports
very versatile, very deep, but uncannily easy to use
and simple to learn!
full import/export
excellent support
easy on the eyes
good long trial period
great priceCons
- nothing worth mentioning
Summary
I think the editors here were a little too hard with their assessment. If you look at the competition in this particular ilk, class, and price point of schedulers (handling rosters for varied duties during particular shifts or events - which most "planning" schdulers do not handle well or at all) I do not think you will find better, or even close, to what this package is offering.
A more Accurate "PROS" List
And thats compared to ones that only 'handle' scheduling, but this one can 'generate' schedules based on complex criteria, which plainly outclasses anything in this price range (that I have seen so far anyway).
I looked all over, spent a week trying out about 20 pieces of software - it was grueling. We finally settled on this terrific little gem. I am so relieved and grateful to have found this...
***JUST TRY IT.
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My client's need is to schedule repeating weekly events thru the year, with some custom ones, that have several events within each day...
Each event has several duty positions, or roles... Speaker, Manager, Host1, Host2, Helper1, Helper2... etc.
Everyone has their own limitations... only the first and third tuesday of the month, absent on days x,y,z, never on the first Sunday of the month, this one does Sundays at 6, but on the third week only does sat evenings, this one can do anytime, but only once a month... it goes on and on...
What the client wants is for me to setup the duty roster (for about 100 people) so he can click a button each month and have the coming month's schedule laid and filled, with no conflicts.
Yeah, right. Never gonna happen without throwing lots of money at that...
But lo and behold... that is exactly what this software is designed to do, and it does it rather well (understatement). It addresses every caveat I mentioned above, and many many many more. Simply amazing.
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Using this type of software can be daunting. If you have looked at any others than you know this to be true. But we slipped right in to working on this program without breaking a sweat. It is very straightforward and easy. I am surprised they made it so intuitive to get up and running and then to find very complex features for sculpting each aspect, and being able to understand how those aspects interact or connect.
I have been able to build and sculpt our scenario as we go without any problems. This was not the case with any other product we tried, except the ones that were too difficult to even figure out ;^)
The Help file is very well thought out, simple but complete, and very helpful. I found almost all the answers to my questions in there immediately. And when I sent the publisher (tech support) a question I received immediate and helpful responses.
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Reporting may not be the prettiest, but it is super-feature rich and very pliable. And the reports are smart and easy to read (I will take that any day over 'pretty').
*There is no report we thought up yet that we could not make this app generate for us.
And Its also remarkably fast.
And if it cannot natively do just exactly the report you want, you can output the report result to Word or even the clipboard (for dropping into a spreadsheet or table or whatever) and customize your own. A macro later and you have your custom report auto-generate as usual, no problem.
Incredibly accommodating reporting (and the publisher said to me it is 'not their strong suit' - I beg to differ).
This ugly duckling stands head and shoulders above the others. (Others I have tried typically make everything all pretty, but impose limitations at every turn, usually to the point of making the report practically unusable).
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Emailing is simple right from within the program. Go generate your report. When you are happy with the results, it can send them out to your users (directly or from your own email program), with custom note you type in if you want, and it can differentiate between who does and does not have email (so you can print labels for mailing the other reports out).
It also maintains logs so you can track emails sent to your members.
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I cannot say enough about this software. No I do not work for these guys, -but they certainly have worked for me. I got a response on every email within no time. They even updated the program immediately after pointing out an obscure (but minor) flaw I tripped over during use.
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The reason I am taking time to post here is to show my gratitude to the publisher for their smart software, backed by their attentive support. If you do roster scheduling you know it requires a certain fortitude, for it can surely drive you mad, not to mention take up all your time. This is the safeguard and tool for handling both those dangers, ...assuming you don't have hundreds and thousands of dollars to spend.
Killer app for the price. Thanks Davallia!
Updated on Feb 26, 2011
- auto-generates schedules at the touch of a button
- no kidding (I was shocked)
- handles very complex associations for events, people, roles, and time discrepancies
- custom reports
- very versatile
- very deep
- but uncannily easy to use
- and simple to learn (another shocker)
- great and flexible reporting (another shocker, just compare to some others)
- full importing and exporting features (not skimpy or limited like others)
- excellent, attentive, personal tech support (when do you get that?)
- easy on, and helpful to, the eyes (you schedulers out there know that scheduling can cause blindness, insanity, or plain stark raving madness, depending on your fortitude)
- good long trial period
- **excellent price** for this level of package. really, I mean it.
Some other very useful things not typically seen in others...
- custom fields
- comments on/in reports
- notes -
"Where's the Help File?"
Version: SmartRoster 3.2
Cons
I downloaded and installed the free trial but it couldn't find the Help file. Pretty hard to evaluate software with no instructions!
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