How would you make this simple scheduler?

Question

I'm working on an admin section right now to schedule employees for their shifts. It is simple in that on any day, employees work either the day or the night shift. How would you go about doing this so that it is easy to display? I was thinking I have a table with the employee names going down the first column. Then, the next 7 columns are the upcoming 7 days. Each cell would be a drop down with Not Scheduled, Day Shift and Night Shift as the three choices. Is this how you'd do it? I've never done anything like this so I could really use some advice.

Thanks!

Answer 1

For something like employees you're probably going to see a lot of text no matter what. Why not just list in times and out times, sorted by time?

John Smith in  7:30
Mary Anne  in  7:30

John Smith out 4:00
Mary Anne  out 4:00

You could color-code in vs out. You could also break it down to 5 10 15 or 30 minute increments for sections, though i'm not sure what the value would be. Maybe faster visual reference?

Do something like this for a "day" view which can be drilled in from week/month, etc. While you're at it you could easily create an employee schedule view that could be a little bit more graphical.

Edit: I suppose the above doesn't address your question so much as it exemplifies what you can do with the data once you have it.

For scheduling you could create a pretty basic form comprised of a sort of lookup/autocomplete field for the employee name, and a date field and 2 time fields (in/out). If you use something like jQuery dialog, you could insert these schedules directly from any other schedule view to help you see what you're looking for. You could pretty easily fit 7 columns wide of lists of in and out times to represent a week in sort of a "spread" view. You could have options to page by week or by day. In paging by day you would have sort of a rotation capability, which might be handy if the end of one week can impact the beginning of the next.

Answer 2

I think, as the admin, I could prefer something just a bit simpler. A drop-down with Day or Night; and the ability to choose neither, if no shift.