How should this user process be implemented to make it as intuitive as possible

Question

I have to create this process:

• you have an arbitrary list of people
• you have to set their working schedule in terms of 5-2 or 6-4 (workdays and free days)
• you have to schedule it for several months ahead (usually 3 or 12)
• schedule sequence repeats
• schedule sequence starts on any day for any person - so first work day is not necessarily on first Monday when you start setting schedule

So this is the process I have to implement. To make it more fast I want to set scheduling for multiple people on a single page (hence a list of users). Otherwise one would probably do this on some person's details page.

I wonder how should I implement this in a web application. I can use Ajax and advanced dynamic scenarios. I would like to make it as intuitive as possible and as simple as well so it shouldn't be to complicated for users doing it.

One possible solution

Each user is presented with this kind of a list row:

John Doe     | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 15 | ...
Jane Doe     | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 15 | ...
Joe Bloggs   | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 15 | ...
Harry Wotsit | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 15 | ...

1. User clicks all days of the first sequence to make them orange/grey (working/free)
2. Drags over the sequence (like drag cells in Excel to select them) and then an icon would appear at the end (probably a sort of an arrow) that
3. user would then click to copy the same sequence to the end of schedule (similar to the small square on the right-bottom side of selected cells in Excel that makes it possible to copy those cells as long as you drag the square around.

I'm not sure whether this is the optimal and intuitive process.

Answer 1

Does it have to be that snazzy??

You could simply have several text boxes, "daysOn", "daysOff", "startDate", "repeatX"

This would allow you to simply create patterns, which you could then display in some snazzy way.

Also, I would probably do this on a per user basis, so user at a time, if a company has several thousand workers on shift patterns you would not want to edit or display all that info in one shot. Would you??

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Few hints:

• use calendar control ( or equivalent in mvc) since it is more intuitive than row
• try to avoid drag & drop because it's slow if you have to do it many times
• try to minimalize click number needed to do a task. For examample when user select 5-2 term type and click in calendar to mark date when workdays starts this term should be assigned as default so user dont have to choose it again when want to mark another date as starting of 5-2 period.
• use list with checkboxs to allow selecting many users