Scheduler Feedback 2016

[ricmorin]

Here's what we are doing for loaners cars.....

1. We created a 'Customer' for each loaner car.
2, We make an all day appointment for each loaner.
3. We put the customer who is receiving the car in the Notes field.
4. We have a Resource for each loaner which is applied to the appointment.

Now it is easy to see which loaner cars are accounted for and which are available.

[BERGMANS1]

Here's what we are doing for loaners cars.....

1. We created a 'Customer' for each loaner car.
2, We make an all day appointment for each loaner.
3. We put the customer who is receiving the car in the Notes field.
4. We have a Resource for each loaner which is applied to the appointment.

Now it is easy to see which loaner cars are accounted for and which are available.

But doesn't that mess up your scheduled hour total? That is the issue I am having now with creating an all day event to show a loaner is scheduled out.

[ricmorin]

Yes it does, but we ignore scheduled hours and only look at the order hours. We make an estimate for every appointment, so order hours is what's important for us, plus the blocks on the schedule are an indicator. The loaner cars have no actual order associated, so it only adds into Appointment hours.

Certainly not ideal. There's a lot of work to be done to make this Scheduler work like a repair shop. We're making it work for now. One thing I can say is we used to track our loaner cars outside Manager on our status board. We no longer have to do that so that's a plus.

[John C.]

Here's my two and a half cents:

Like oil is to a car, our scheduler is to us, it’s our lifeblood... Our whole world was turned upside down last Thursday, when we downloaded the latest version of ShopKey.

We are a small shop, just three of us (two techs and me). Even though I do most of the scheduling, we all answer phones and pretty much do everything. As much as the old scheduler wasn't perfect for us, the way we modified it, it actually worked quite nicely - for us.

I know many shops like to see the booked hours for the day, we have never gone by that. As a small shop, what was and still is most important to us, is to look at the schedule, on any given day, and within seconds know what is going on.

We use the category for many things within ShopKey. On the schedule we used the categories for "Waits", "Drop Offs", "Loaner Car", "Notice/Attention"... In the Notes section, we'd put why they are coming in, reason for the note... So, we could simply bring up a day on the schedule, and for instance see (much cleaner on the old scheduler, than this) that we have a:

"NOTE, M Leaving at 3:30 for doc appointment"
"7:30 LOF wait"
"8:15 LOF wait" (we try and make our LOF waits first thing in the morning)
"Drop Off, check brakes (hearing squeaking noise when braking)"
"Drop Off, LOF, Check exhaust leak, check for services due"
"Loaner - 05 Matrix, TB Service"
"Loaner - 05 Outback, Check overheating".

As stated above, any of us can look at that (again, very clean on the old scheduler), and within seconds know what our day looks like, and quickly determine what/if we can add, if a customer wants to come in on that particular day.

On the new scheduler, thanks to carrieswanlund, I’ve taken some of her ideas and made three resource columns and colored them: Waits, Drop Offs, and Loaner Cars. The fourth “unassigned” column I am using for any sort of note.

To keep things as neat as possible, in the drop off and loaner car columns, I start them at 7:30 (to us it’s irrelevant exactly when they are coming in, we have the car for the day) and I space them, so they are not bunched up and we can resize each box, so we can read ALL the notes, to know what they are coming in for.

Problems: awful lot of steps and typing to get the appointment made. Once we create an order from the appointment, and start adding labor, that’s when the boxes begin to resize themselves in the schedule and the bunching up/side by side/stretching things start to happen. Also, we can’t see the whole day, depending on what and when things were scheduled.

I guess, to put it simply, if one were to use an appointment book, like many of us probably have for this and other things in life (like an "At-A-Glance Appointment Book"), that’s what I’d like to see on the screen, only have it so we can add things quickly and easily convert them into a repair order WITHOUT changing the display on the schedule.

Again, I don’t want to pile on, but if this product were being demoed to me today, with the videos I just watched, we’d have never gotten to all the great features inside ShopKey, the scheduler is that import to us.

[BERGMANS1]

What John said pretty much sums it up for us as well.

[motley06]

I know I said it in another post, but I'll repeat it here to see if anyone else agrees. I think a lot of us shop owners thought we wanted a new/better scheduler when we had the old one. We thought something more visual, with categories and resources and colors, etc. would be better. Now we realize the old scheduler actually worked better than what we thought we wanted. I am aware This probably doesn't help much, but I imagine on Mitchell's end it's tough to hear for so long that people wanted the scheduler to be revamped, only to hear so many complaints when they actually deliver what so many have been asking for.

[BERGMANS1]

I know I said it in another post, but I'll repeat it here to see if anyone else agrees. I think a lot of us shop owners thought we wanted a new/better scheduler when we had the old one. We thought something more visual, with categories and resources and colors, etc. would be better. Now we realize the old scheduler actually worked better than what we thought we wanted. I am aware This probably doesn't help much, but I imagine on Mitchell's end it's tough to hear for so long that people wanted the scheduler to be revamped, only to hear so many complaints when they actually deliver what so many have been asking for.

We never had an issue with the old scheduler. It told us who was coming in, when they were coming in and for how long. Then it gave a total number of appointments and expected hours. We used the note area to show who was waiting, who needed a ride home, tow in or loaner. Everything else was a drop for the day. It was simple and it did what we needed it to do. I am trying to adapt to the new one. I have a vision of it being something great. But for now, I spend way more time in the scheduler than I think I should.

[wrench27]

Overall were pretty happy with the scheduler.
I know the 2 items that are most important to us as far as additional features that we would like to be added have already been talked about but I thought I would drop them again.

1. EMAIL capture on the new customer screen.
2. Referral Sources on the new customer screen.
3 (distant but relevant) additional phone number slots.

Thanks to the Mitchell team - this has certainly come along way since we 1st did the 7 update.

[GUTHTIRE]

We just installed the latest update, 7.0.18. Unfortunately we still do not have access to Job hours when entering an appointment. If we were able to update it then we would be able to see Total Hours in View without "building" the appointment by entering each detail when a customer calls to schedule. What we were looking for in the Scheduler was a customer calls on the phone and wants to schedule a vehicle for let's say....an oil change, tire rotation, state inspection and emissions. We click on the day then enter their name, select the vehicle or add new if required, enter "lof, rot, si/ei then select the Job Hours and type in 3.0 hrs (a rough estimate for all the work) and done. Will this be available?

[Johnny5]

We just installed the latest update, 7.0.18. Unfortunately we still do not have access to Job hours when entering an appointment. If we were able to update it then we would be able to see Total Hours in View without "building" the appointment by entering each detail when a customer calls to schedule. What we were looking for in the Scheduler was a customer calls on the phone and wants to schedule a vehicle for let's say....an oil change, tire rotation, state inspection and emissions. We click on the day then enter their name, select the vehicle or add new if required, enter "lof, rot, si/ei then select the Job Hours and type in 3.0 hrs (a rough estimate for all the work) and done. Will this be available?

You can do this now if you define a few generic canned jobs, add them to the quick menu and select those when building the appointment.

[GUTHTIRE]

We just installed the latest update, 7.0.18. Unfortunately we still do not have access to Job hours when entering an appointment. If we were able to update it then we would be able to see Total Hours in View without "building" the appointment by entering each detail when a customer calls to schedule. What we were looking for in the Scheduler was a customer calls on the phone and wants to schedule a vehicle for let's say....an oil change, tire rotation, state inspection and emissions. We click on the day then enter their name, select the vehicle or add new if required, enter "lof, rot, si/ei then select the Job Hours and type in 3.0 hrs (a rough estimate for all the work) and done. Will this be available?

You can do this now if you define a few generic canned jobs, add them to the quick menu and select those when building the appointment.

We realize that you can do this by canned jobs however it takes seconds on the phone to type "lof, rot, si/ei" vs. clicking and adding jobs why on the phone. This takes way too much time...was that something that was requested? My question was "Will the Job Hours field ever be opened and editable"?

[KSTAUTOMOTIVE]

I get what people are asking for entering a NEW customer with Email, but when entering an EXISTING customer on file (without email previously entered "somehow"...lol) that now making an appointment for them at that has no option to add email--- there is no drop down spot to add if missing. Phone number has a drop down...? Email shows if was entered previously.