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Author Topic: Facilities Scheduling Program -- Any Good Ones? Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-15-2013 04:45 PM                        We are looking for a decent facility scheduling program. We just need it to be able to schedule up to about a half dozen spaces with a calendar for easy visual display of what's going on, a way to have a three or four levels of access rights with password protection, and a way to attach or incorporate things like invoices, contracts, lighting and staging plots, plus any associated documents that always accompany a theatrical production. We looked at one -- Artifax-Event -- designed and developed by a company in England who don't seem to know how we do here in the good ole US of A. It doesn't follow the basic, universally accepted protocols that almost all programs use regarding simple things like the use of the mouse, for example. Normally you can point to an item like the name of a theatre or room, right or even left click on it and you expect it to open up to give you more information...in this program it doesn't. In Artifacts, you need to open submenus that are simpley unintuitive. It is 1) much to convoluted and over-blown, bogged down with unnecessary steps to get to simple functions -- for example, you want to enter a client's name directly -- you can't; you need to first create an "Arrangement" (yes even the nomenclature sounds like you are in a different country). In short, it is VERY user unfriendly. It also is not self-contained, but relies on MS's SQL database application and expects it to be running perfectly -- one glitch in that app and your scheduling programn is dead in the water. I need a program that has the ear-marks of what I call well-written software -- the basic operation of it should be intuitive enough so you can figure it out just by looking at the screens. Sure, delving deeper into the nuances, you may need to open an instruction book or hit the Help tab, but if you need to first read an instruction book that is 145 8.5x11 pages long in order to enter a client's name and address, to me it one badly designed program. If any of you are using a scheduling program that works well that you like and that you find non-technical staff feel comfortable with, please let me know. Thanks in advance. Oh, and PS -- it would be nice if the program were purchased with full ownership; i.e., you buy it, you own it. Sure, you can always buy their upgrades, but I want the program itself to be ours outright. This deal that Artifax has were you only license it and have to pay them a yearly license fee ($1500) or you can't legally use it, is bogus.  |  IP: Logged David Zylstra Master Film Handler Posts: 432 From: Novi, MI, USA Registered: Mar 2007 posted 07-19-2013 08:02 AM                     One of our locations combined a restaurant, bowling and banquet facility in the same building as the theatre. We use a program called Caterease, they have both online hosted versions and ones that you buy and host in-house - we use the online version since our salespeople are usually outside the building and managing all their VPN connections back to our network is something we don't have the support structure to do. The software handles all aspects of events - i.e. room scheduling, menu, AV requirements, invoicing, etc. Overall the program works and functions well, but can get pricy depending on all the optional modules you want and how many client PCs there are (we paid a ton of initial $$ to get the online version set up and ongoing pricing is based on users so our yearly cost is pretty high). I was not involved in the process of choosing it or training but it was picked because our former banquet director was familiar with it and liked it, there is a little bit of a learning curve but new people seem to pick it up pretty quick.  |  IP: Logged David Buckley Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 525 From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand Registered: Aug 2004 posted 07-22-2013 04:04 AM                        Frank, you are in good company; in the UK, Artifax is widely used, as it gets the job done, but everyone hates it. I've never heard a complimentary word said in favour of it. On a theatre relevant website, this issue was discussed not so long ago, and the following solutions were offered, neither of which are necessarily complete http://www.nslcrm.com/ http://www.patronbase.com/info/ (and in particular the Venue Manager module) Any scalable programme will use a back end database these days, and in the windows world, MSSQL is the standard, often the freebie "Express" implementation.  |  IP: Logged

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