Sling

[Tracerland11]

Hi everyone,

I am wanting to get everyone's feedback on scheduling apps. Currently, we use Homebase but their latest updates and continuing issues with syncing with Toast have made it a nightmare. I am looking at options to maybe switch but wanted opinions on which apps everyone uses and the pro's and con's that you have had. I was thinking sling originally, but after looking at the reviews on google play, I am thinking maybe its not good, Seems that it doesn't work very well for android users. What is everyone's thoughts on sling or other scheduling apps that can be integrated with toast?

[Tracerland11]

Just started our 15 day trial of sling pro, I was trying to wait for life schedules to slow down but then realized that I just had to do it cause life plans will always plan as I wait for the right time. I will post updates as I notice things or as I figure things out.

So far there is a slight learning curve from homebase, but that's to be expected. It's going to take me a couple days to figure out settings and find where some are if they are there. One thing I have noticed was how the scheduling works, part of that learning curve or setting, I would be able to see the day schedule as the earliest person scheduled would be at top, working down for later times in the day, that kind of throws me off a little bit but like I said, could be a setting, will be scouring those in depth as the days go by. 

I am also testing the tasks feature, will be going thru those and seeing how they turn out, see what feedback I get from the co-workers about them as well. 

The mobile app seems to navigate fairly easily, we will be testing that out as well to see how it fairs to what we are used to. I will be going over things with a fine tooth comb with issues I know I have had with homebase to see how well it works. One thing I have noticed is that you can't exit the sling app by pressing the back key(android), you have to use the home button or the recent apps to close out of it, minor issue but if we make the full switch, I will make sure that I email them about improvements such as that. They might have a love/hate relationship with me by the time they get to know me. 

As far as transitioning from homebase to sling, that part seems to be really easy. Although I made the mistake of integrating sling thru my toast account instead of the owners, caused a slight mishap but was able to fix it quickly. So make sure you are the owner or can get them to do it before you sign up.  Importing the schedule from homebase was easy, since it was synced with toast, was able to import what was there, everything matched. I do like that wages and roles were imported, that's soooo nice. Having to go in, on a computer mind you couldn't do it from mobile web with homebase since their last update, to add jobs and wages was making my life miserable.

So from what I can gather, I would say that it will be a good scheduling app, seems like it will import everything from toast payroll, to toast pos, to sling automatically. SOOOO NICE!!!! Early stages of testing so will see how things go and what issues we come up with if any. Most will probably be settings that will just have to be changed. 

[Talie]

Yes, please share because I am dealing with the same issue. 

[Tracerland11]

Are you currently with homebase or sling? What issues are you having so that I can be on the lookout for them or maybe have a solution for them? I'm still in the process of getting my team to switch for a short duration for testing but will be posting as much as I can. 

[Tracerland11]

Just finished our 2 week trial, decided to make the switch. Have found that one of the issues I mentioned earlier about scheduling showing the earliest shifts first was a setting, found in the group by function, so that made it nice to be able to see that sorted first in to last.

Also trying out "Day Parts" where you can sort the schedule to show morning, lunch, or dinner service, that does seem useful to me to be able to create those and see who you've got scheduled  at the different hours as well. 

Being able to select departments and only copying that department over to another week is really nice. In homebase, it was copy all or nothing, kind of sucked when multiple people do the scheduling. Sling you can select one, multiple or all departments and copy whichever over. 

A couple issues I've ran into though, have had a couple shifts that did not sync to toast and when changing shifts around on mobile it seemed to have the same issue of not syncing. However, they thought it might be part that we still had homebase integrated with toast and that it was trying to dual sync and causing the issue of that, toast did say it shouldn't be a problem and sling was on the fence about it, so I wasn't surprised that there were syncing issues. This week will mark the first full week of only having sling integrated so time will tell.  One other sync issue is that sling doesn't show me as clocked in even if I clock in early, but again could be the dual sync causing the issues. 

[Rob]

Thanks for keeping us updated about your experiences, I'm definitely curious to see if having only Sling integrated solves the syncing issues as well!