Tech Tip: How To Get Your Work Schedule on your iCal or Google Calendar

Here's a popular one we get asked quite often...how do I get my EMS Manager, FIRE Manager or Zanager work schedule into my iCal or Google Calendar? Well, here's how you do it!

iCal is a popular calendar app found in Mac OS X. If you are an iCloud or Google Calendar user, it can subscribe to Internet calendars as well as keep local calendars on your computer. If you use an iOS device like an iPhone, iPad or even an iPod Touch, through Apple's free iCloud service, you can have all of your calendars synced "in the cloud." The same goes for Google Calendar users on Android devices. 

First things first, log in to your Aladtec online employee scheduling system and go to your My Schedule page. You will find this under Work Schedule tab. At the bottom of the page, you will see an info box that looks something like this:

Select the schedules you would like to sync and click "Subscribe." Then click on the "Apple iCal" tab and highlight and copy the long URL in blue. For Google Calendar, click on the "Google Cal" tab then highlight and copy the long URL in blue.

For iCal in OS X:

1. Launch iCal on your computer (see Pic 1)
2. From the File menu, select "New Calendar Subscription" (see Pic 2)
3. From the subscribe window, paste the previously highlighted URL and click on "Subscribe" (see Pic 3)
4. On the next window, you can set the auto-refresh rate, the location and alert settings. I would suggest changing this to "Every Day" if it is not already (see Pic 4)

If you have iCloud set up to sync across your iOS devices, your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch will have this calendar automatically appear on your device when you select the location "iCloud." For information on how to directly add your work schedule to your iOS device, check out this blog entry.

For Google Calendar:

1. Log in to your Google account and click Calendar on the menu bar.
2. On the left-hand side, click on Other calendars and select "Add by URL"
3. Paste the URL you copied from My Schedule here and click "Add Calendar"
4. Google Calendar will auto-refresh so your calendar will stay current 
5. One neat function of Google Calendar is the option to set event reminders. Using event reminders, you can select a default reminder before each event. You can set up your mobile phone to receive a text notification as well as receiving an email from this page.

If you have an Android device that is synced to your Google account, this calendar will automatically appear on your device.

Furthermore, if you use Microsoft Outlook or Yahoo! Calendar or any other type of calendar app, adding your EMS Manager, FIRE Manager or Zanager work schedule should have a similar process as one of the examples above. And as usual, if you have any questions about adding your work schedule to your personal calendar app, please feel free to contact Customer Service at (888) 749-5550 or at support@aladtec.com.

An RFP... Really!!???

A couple of weeks ago we received an RFP (request for proposal).  It was from a county based EMS organization and they were looking for an online employee scheduling system just like ours.  At first we thought "Great, we're perfect for this".  But then we looked deeper into the RFP...

It was 59 pages of rules and specifications - not untypical for an RFP I guess.  After spending a few hours reviewing it we felt confident our EMS Manager system was a perfect fit.  We guessed it would take us about another ten hours to provide written answers to all the questions, and a few more hours to put together the necessary proposal documents to apply for this sale. We estimated our quote would be less than $7000 per year for this customer - including all setup, hosting, support and training.

Then we came to the section in the RFP that stated "The maximum budgeted amount for this project is $120,000".  SERIOUSLY!!!???  $120,000???  

Don't get me wrong, we'd love to make a $120,000 sale, but we think we can meet their needs for less than $7000 per year and still make a profit.  We already have over 780 customers using our system for the same purpose.

It seems the person writing this RFP had lots of help from one of our bigger competitors, because many of the specification requirements were word-for-word copies from that competitor's specification document.  And that $120,000 seems to be in their price range. 

We realize many city and county governments require purchases over certain amounts to be awarded through the RFP process.  We also realize these processes were put in place to encourage competition and eliminate cronyism, nepotism, or kickbacks - the most honorable of reasons. 

But, imagine your county needs to buy a car.  Does it make sense to have Lamborghini help you write the RFP?  Does it make sense to budget $1,600,000 (the price of a Lamborghini Reventon)?  And does it make sense to require vertically opening doors, zero to 60 in 3.3 seconds, a top speed of 211mph, and an instrument panel milled from a solid block of aluminum?  I'm not suggesting anyone is dishonest here.  I'm sure the Reventon is a fine care, and I'm sure that if Ford or GM can meet those specs for a lower price they will get fair consideration. 

I am however suggesting that using the provider of the most expensive solution to help you write the specs is not the best approach.  I am also suggesting that when you can find multiple vendors selling off-the-shelf products in quantity outside the RFP process for reasonable prices, you may want to abandon the RFP process.

Are we 100% certain that our solution will meet this particular customer's precise needs?  No, but we're 99% sure.  We're even willing to set up a complete system for them for FREE so they can try it before they buy it.  If they don't like it they owe us nothing.  We have a handful of competitors who would offer them the same deal - but they probably won't - because this RFP is out there and everyone knows who helped them create it and who will probably get the sale.

We keep hearing about our larger competitors winning RFPs like this one and then taking two years, along with “add-on phase II” or “phase III” money, to get the installation finished.  We wouldn't need a phase II, or a phase III - we can have our solution up and running within three days.

We called the county who posted the RFP, and told them our system would meet their needs, is already used by 25 nearby emergency services and costs less than $7000. We also offered to let them use our system free of charge for a while so they could verify that it really does meet their needs.

They told us to just complete the RFP and we'd be given fair consideration.

The problem is, we don't even know if the RFP is the final step in their process.  In the past we filled out an RFP, and after a few months we received a CONGRATULATIONS LETTER to inform us we were a finalist and AWARDED with the OPPORTUNITY to present our solution IN PERSON at THEIR LOCATION.  We declined.

You see, we sell a SaaS subscription.  We have almost 800 customers as of today running the same software.  We upgrade it periodically based on customer feedback.  Our tech support is free.  Our hosting is super high-end.  We can do all this because we keep our sales costs very low, we don't spend a lot on travel, we don't install equipment at customer locations, and we don't waste a lot of time filling out RFPs.

I don't know what the solution is.  As a matter of fact I don't even know if there really is a problem.  After all, we made all of our sales so far without filling out RFPs.  And our biggest competitors seem to be happy with the process.  It just seems like the customers that go the RFP route (in our industry at least) waste a huge amount of time and money.  But I probably shouldn't complain - oh well, too late for that, right?

Tech Tip: Date Range Delete: When & How To Use It

If you've been using EMS Manager, FIRE Manager or Zanager for some time now, you may have noticed a function called, "Date Range Delete," a sub-navigation option under "Schedule Editor." You may have even called us and had one of our technicians go over what exactly it does.

Here's a quick rundown of what each section does and when to use this neat and effective tool.

Date Range Delete allows you to remove scheduled time for a specific date/time range. It also allows you to remove scheduled time in a set pattern. Here is what each section provides: 

• Employee/Position
• Select the employee, ALL employees, BLOCK TIME or All employees & BLOCK TIME from the pull-down menu
• Select the schedule or ALL schedules for the employee selection
• Date/Time Range
• Select the Date and Time Range for the desired delete range
• Schedule Repetition
• Start Time & End Time allows you to pick a specific time range within a day to remove scheduled time
• Work Day(s) allows you to pick specific days of the week within a date range to remove scheduled time
• Previous Rotations is a list of current rotations set from "Repeats and Rotations." You can remove those rotations by clicking on "remove."

So when would a tool like this be useful? 

Let's say you have an employee that for a certain date range, let's say for all of May through July, needs Friday mornings 9AM-12PM off for a class. Rather then go through each day in the schedule, you can use this tool to remove those specific times, if any are scheduled. Here's how you would do it:

1. Select the employee's name from the employee list and select "All Schedules" from the schedule list
2. Select May 1, 2012 00:00 to July 31, 2012 00:00 from the Date/Time range selector
3. Select 09:00 as the start time and 12:00 as the end time and check off only Friday from the work day checkboxes

After a confirmation pop-up, what will happen is that anytime this employee was scheduled form 0900 - 1200 on a Friday during May through July, he will be removed from the schedule on those times. 

Other uses for "Date Range Delete" is to remove someone entirely from the schedule for a certain date range without shutting off their repeating schedule. For instance, if someone is on maternity leave or medical leave. 

"Date Range Delete" is also a fantastic tool to remove BLOCK TIME from blocked shifts in chunks. Let's say you have an event schedule that is permanently blocked. You use "Date Range Delete" to delete the block time you want to "open up" for a special event.

As usual, if you have any questions about this or any other feature, please do not hesitate to contact Customer Service at (888) 749-5550 or at support@aladtec.com.

Get More Out Of Your Aladtec System with our API (Application Programming Interface)

An API, or application programming interface, is a specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other. What does that mean for the rest of us? It means that your EMS Manager, FIRE Manager or Zanager information, can be pulled into an application leveraging data from all kinds of sources. This means that custom applications can be developed to include information from any software with an accessible API. Whether it be software for incident reporting, database, weather, payroll, etc., APIs allow you to take your data to another level of interoperability.

Thanks, eBay, for the nice word cloud!

Sterling Volunteer Rescue Squad (SVRS) in Sterling, Virginia is a great example of how our API can be used to increase productivity all around. Having seen a status board at another agency, Chief Byron Andrews wanted something similar at his stations. They had been using whiteboards at each of their stations and he knew it wasn't working - information wasn't updated or was inaccurate...or even illegible. Wanting to get away from this "instrument of disaster," as Chief Andrews called it, he wanted an electronic status board at each station so everyone would be on the same page. Woody Null*, an EMT at SVRS, and founder of Woody Null Technologies*, answered the call and began developing their own electronic status board, or ESB. 

"We went through a couple of versions of the ESB to make sure we had something we liked. Chief Andrews wanted something that people would understand right away from looking at it. The API was incredibly easy to use and the XML data flows nicely. It took me roughly 9 months, part-time, to develop the web app which allows us to access the ESB from home or on our handheld devices as easily as in the station," says Null.

SVRS's electronic status board pulls data from their EMS Manager system along with mechanical data, recent call information and environmental data. Chief Andrews says, "Using 42” television screens and by creating an electronic status board, we have a consistent message throughout the organization. And like EMS Manager, our ESB is web-based so we can make changes or view updates using any computer or smartphone." Chief Andrews is looking forward to incorporating our latest addition to our API, allowing their EMS Manager event calendar data to be merged into their ESB.

Chad Clay, Aladtec Director of Business Development, with Chief Byron Andrews of Sterling Volunteer Rescue Squad at the EMS Today 2012 Convention.

Newton County Ambulance District (NCAD) in Neosho, Missouri also makes use of the Aladtec API to share and distribute information. NCAD's billing department needed to access their EMS Manager employee schedule to know who is on live duty. They wanted a simple way to get them this data without requiring them to log in to EMS Manager. Using the API, they were able to quickly create a simple desktop app (.NET) to allow the billing department access to current and future scheduling data. “The API was easy to work with and it let us accomplish a specific need for our service," said Robert White, IT Administrator for NCAD.

For more information on our API, please visit http://www.aladtec.com/vendor_api.php or contact Aladtec Tech Support at (888) 749-5550. 

To read our recent press release about our latest API enhancement, click here.

For more information on Woody Null and Woody Null Technologies, please visit www.woodynull.com or email contact@woodynull.com.

Special thanks to Chief Byron Andrews and Woody Null from Sterling Volunteer Rescue Squad and Robert White from Newton County Ambulance District for sharing about their Aladtec API experience!

Press Release: Ste. Genevieve County Ambulance District Grows With EMS Manager

Kendall Shrum and Ste. Genevieve County Ambulance District (SGCAD) in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, have seen a lot of growth over the past years and has counted on EMS Manager to keep their employee schedule organized even with all their changes.

Expanding from one station and two crews to three stations and four crews, having an online employee scheduling system to track house and crew staffing and availability has been key. A system administrator for SGCAD's EMS Manager system, Shrum says that with EMS Manager, "Scheduling time has been reduced by over half. Finding coverage for open shifts and the ability to track trade and vacation requests makes managing our schedule simple and easy." 

Ste. Genevieve County Ambulance District

Like so many other services, SGCAD switched to an online scheduling system from a paper and spreadsheet schedule. Shrum shares that "It was difficult managing vacation requests, shift trades and availability for our PRN (as-needed) members, since they were submitted on paper by hand. We’d often lose requests and availability and contacted too many people by phone to find coverage." 

More than 20 public safety agencies use either EMS Manager or FIRE Manager for their workforce management in the state of Missouri. To read the entire press release, click here.

Thanks to Kendall and everyone at Ste. Genevieve County Ambulance District for choosing EMS Manager!