Automated Rota Management system in SharePoint

Forward staff rotas: wouldn’t it be great if everything you needed to manage a staff rota was in one place?

Problem:

The client creates all rotas well in advance for the up and coming year. This forward planning works well for the needs of the business. However, as with everything, all rotas are subject to change:

• Employees fall ill,
• take holiday,
• unplanned absences,
• unexpected injuries.

Planned rotas need to be checked weekly by supervisors when they are issued. A rota management system needs to be dynamic to cope with exceptions.

Solution:

Springboard IT created SharePoint timer jobs to work in conjunction with their current system. There is no need to re-key information as data already in the system is accessed. These jobs run automatically before employees arrive at work. Rotas are checked to ensure enough staff are in for each day, otherwise appropriate supervisors and individuals are emailed.

Another timer job running 24 hours later automatically sends out the following week’s rota to a pre-defined distribution list.

Unexpected Bonus

The contact details of those rota’d now appear in a contacts folder in Outlook so anyone can find their contact details. The actual rota appears as a calendar in Outlook. Staff, managers and anyone else authorised to do so can see the latest rota without leaving MS Outlook. If running Exchange server, the calendars can be visible on employee and staff smartphones.