Time to grow – Uurwerk Online
The ceiling comes into view
Time marched on and the clientele of Uurwerk grew, as did the clients themselves. The virtual ceiling came into view. Uurwerk could not handle more than 15 employees and the security of an Excel file, however advanced, has its limitations, especially when several schedulers are using it.
Time to grow
In 2007 Marijcke initiated discussions with Rik Bruins of Art of Automation, software developer, sound technician and former Artifax-consultant. Just as Marijcke, Rik has a thorough knowledge of the cultural sector and embraces challenges head on. Together they decided to develop an advanced version of Uurwerk, whilst retaining the strong points of Uurwerk Basic:
- Events-guided staff scheduling;
- Schedule and time tracking in one;
- Maintenance of sick days, holidays and overtime;
- Checking the schedule against the Working Hours Act and the CBA of the Dutch stage.
This time, however, it was packaged as a modern web application with a robust SQL Server database, and with all the options that current internet techniques provide:
- Employees indicate their availability online;
- Schedulers create events or import them from an event scheduling program, convert events into shifts and schedule employees on the basis of their qualifications;
- Employees receive an email or text once the schedule is finished so they can consult it online or download it into their own digital diary;
- If they are unable to work a particular shift, they submit an exchange request with a colleague; the scheduler approves the request, after which this is processed in the schedule;
- Employees can see changes to their schedule as soon as they log in;
- Employees fill in their hours worked as far as they deviate from the schedule; management approves the deviations, whereby the holiday and overtime accruals are immediately updated;
- The personnel file of each employee is saved in Uurwerk;
- Management overviews automatically show all the hours worked, and for example the hours worked per employee, department, event, day, year, location etc..
Uurwerk Online
Development takes time, always more than originally thought. Since 2011 the core of the program has been rock solid. This is in partly due to the invaluable contribution of the schedulers at the Stadsschouwburg & Philharmonie Haarlem, Vredenburg and Theaters Tilburg and from countless other schedulers who tackled all sorts of issues to ensure Uurwerk runs as flawlessly as possible.