Online Scheduling

In article ,
Greg Esres wrote:

Thanks to all who commented regarding the online scheduling. Sounds
like everyone found it a positive.

I do wonder, though, whether a purely internet based system is more
targeted towards "flying clubs", which generally don't have the
resources to be fully staffed.

Perhaps. But in our case computerization was what let us use the
staffing resources previously used for scheduling elsewhere...

Our school has 40 instructors (lots part-time) and 20 airplanes. We
normally have two people behind the desk from 7 am to 8 pm, 7 days per
week, 363 days per year. I have always been able to schedule by
making a 30 second telephone transaction, which I could handle while
driving down the street.

A common scenario: it's 10pm, I've just got home from work, and I want
to know when I can next book 4JG from 7pm to 10pm on a weeknight...
with our online system, that's a trivial operation.

We don't have 40 instructors or 20 planes (more like 12 / 6), but the
situation is somewhat similar, except -- and I think this is the big
difference -- the attitude of nearly everyone involved was positive
when we introduced it. As a club we've been email- and web-literate
almost since it was possible to be that way, and using the web to
conveniently access the scheduler whenever and (almost) wherever you
were was seen as a huge advantage. And there's not a person involved
who'd want to go back to the old system.

Interestingly, we also had the scheduler phone / voice command access
turned on for the first two years of use -- and no one ever used it. I
deleted it and no one noticed except our accountant.

I suppose they would still offer that service, though it will now take
them a lot longer to actually record my flight than it would have by
just writing on the paper schedule.

Why "a lot longer"? It typically takes me seconds to enter a new entry
in our system. It's certainly quicker than our older paper and
computerized versions.

I'm a software developer, so I'm definitely not against
computerization, but I've seen enough poor implementations to
understand that not all operations are improved by computerizing them.

True enough. (I'm a web app developer myself). But these apps have been
around now for years, and seem to have settled on a set of features and
interfaces that work well, and that are reliable.

A better implementation, in my view, would be to have a locally
installed computer program to do the scheduling, and then providing
internet access to that data, rather than having the entire
application internet-based. A true Windows program is faster and
could provide a much better user-interface.

But the speed of our online browser-based scheduler simply isn't a
factor -- it's almost instant. The interface isn't particuarly pretty,
but it's sufficient and does its job well. And reliability has been
100%, rock solid, for at least the last three years -- the system goes
down for maybe a minute or two a week on average.

And besides, why reinvent the wheel? And allowing internet connections
to your club system opens up all sorts of security issues, especially
if, as it sounds like, not everyone there is exactly net-literate.

Our support staff, and flight instructors, are all against this online
scheduling, and are betting that the schedule book will be back in a
couple of weeks.

Well, I'd have to say that with a club attitude like that, they're
probably right. Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy, to me...

Hamish

As a club we've been email- and web-literate almost since it was
possible to be that way,

That would not be us. I am the only instructor who has successfuly
scheduled a multi-day airplane rental. :-)

Interestingly, most of the instructors are young, but are almost
computer illiterate. One came to work one day depressed because his
wife had destroyed his computer by getting a virus. All he got when
turning the machine one was a black screen with a cryptic error
message. He brought me a copy of it. It said: "C:\Windows". I
hurt myself falling out of the chair laughing.

phone / voice command access turned on for the first two years of
use -- and no one ever used it.

I don't blame them. I hate voice systems, as a rule. But when I want
to check my bank balance, I use the automated telephone system....much
faster than logging in via the web.

It typically takes me seconds to enter a new entry in our system.

Takes me several minutes. You have to reserve the times by clicking
on option buttons in 30 minute increments. Four buttons for a 2 hour
flight. I go click, click, click, click, and then wait. After a
second or two, one option button lights, pause, then the second,
pause, third, pause and finally fourth.

Well, I'd have to say that with a club attitude like that, they're
probably right. Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy, to me...

Yes, you're right. That's why the decision-makers should have
involved everyone who would use the system.

In article ,
Greg Esres wrote:

It typically takes me seconds to enter a new entry in our system.

Takes me several minutes. You have to reserve the times by clicking
on option buttons in 30 minute increments. Four buttons for a 2 hour
flight. I go click, click, click, click, and then wait. After a
second or two, one option button lights, pause, then the second,
pause, third, pause and finally fourth.

Well, that's a bad interface and / or implementation, but it's not an
argument against online scheduling as such. The browser-based interface
we use has a small set of pull-down menus on the reservation form for
start and end date / times, and that's it unless you want to add a note
(like destination, etc.). Maybe ten seconds to do a normal booking,
perhaps fifteen for a complex booking. The reservation is usually
confirmed within a second or two of submitting the form.

Another rather pleasant feature is being able to do a backup booking
"behind" an existing reservation; if the original booking is cancelled,
your booking automatically becomes the current booking, and you're
notified in email. And for sudden maintenance bookings -- where you may
have to drop a dozen existing reservations at a moment's notice --
things like notifications, etc., are trivial and usually totally
automated. Our maintenance guys just love this system...

Hamish

On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 03:05:56 GMT, Greg Esres
wrote:


Does anyone have an experience with online scheduling with large
flight schools? How well did it work?

Thanks for any thoughts.

When I went to work at a new flight school here in Colorado, The
bossman was into the pen and paper scheduling. I had came from a
flight school in Texas that used ScheduleMaster which I thought was
great, but I know the cost can be a bit prohibitive. So I set out on
searching for something else. What I came up with is a PHP type
scheduler that is open source so that I could change it in a way that
it would fit the school. It was originally designed for scheduling
meetings and rooms, but with a little code change, we now have a full
blown aircraft/instructor/lasergrade scheduler. It took me about 8
months to convince the bossman we needed to go to this type of
scheduler. We put it into place in January and it has worked
superior. HE moaned and groaned for about 2 weeks about how it was
inconvienant for him to now look at the schedule, when all of our
customers were raving about how great it worked. After about 2 months
of seeing how it increased our business and the convience it added to
our customers, he actually came up to me and thanked me for doing
this. This program will actually do resource analysis also. It will
tell you the most popular times and the most popular aircraft at a
click of the mouse among other things.


The original open source for this program is located at
phpscheduleit.sourceforge.net . it is very easy to manipulate if you
now php. We actually changed it significantly will ease.

If you want to see it in action, drop me a line and I can set you up a
temp user name on our beta site so that you can play around with it.

Scott
c o f l y i n g @ p c i s y s d o t n e t

Greg Esres wrote:

Our flight school is currently trying to move to an online, internet
based scheduling system, using a service provided by "MyFBO".


youcanbookit.com

It's what my FBO uses and it's FREE! We love it.

Best,

Randy Wentzel
KSTS