Blog

October 1, 2019

New ‘Shared Filter’ Function Wins Applause From Customers

A few months ago, Aladtec released a new “Shared Filter” feature that eliminates the need for multiple members to create the same filter, and be confident members are all looking at the same information.

Top Level Administrators can easily share filter views for example, to determining overtime hours in reports or the hourly editor, be certain everyone sees the same set of open shifts in a schedule view, or in reviewing submitted forms, such as timesheets and maintenance requests.

“We used this for our new work order form for the reports,” said Keith Halfman, project manager with Lincolnshire-Riverwoods (IL) Fire Protection District. The department is staffed by 44 FT firefighter-paramedics, who respond from three stations covering parts of five villages and unincorporated areas of Lake County, 30 miles north of Chicago.

Asst. Chief Ryan Beck East Peoria Fire Dept.
Asst. Chief Ryan Beck
East Peoria Fire Dept.

Elsewhere in Illinois, Asst. Chief and EMS Coordinator Ryan Beck with East Peoria Fire Dept., acknowledges that Aladtec’s filter tool can be daunting to the occasional user.

“Even if they’re comfortable enough to get in and tick around in there, they could miss one simple box, and it would throw off the view, and then they’re not looking at what they think they’re looking at,” said Beck. “One of our big frustrations when we started (with Aladtec) was that we had to teach each person how to set up, how to edit through to get just what they wanted to see.”

“For just the everyday user, one of the things that was important was knowing the time-off (He labels it “Saved filter: EPFD Time Off View) when they’re going to request vacation time for the year. It all happens in a short amount of time, like six or eight weeks — and so everyone wants to look ahead and see who has posted time-off already on those days. And so now to have that schedule view set up, they can click on that, bounce ahead to the days they’re hoping to have off, they can determine quickly — Is someone already off on that day?

“The other thing that it does for us is that by contract, we can only allow two people off on a vacation or Kelly Day combination.  So for our Duty Chiefs, who are approving the time off, it helps them to be able to bounce ahead quickly in just that view and get rid of everything else and see who’s already off on that day. ‘Can I approve this time off or not?'”

East Peoria Fire Dept.

The “sharing” function hasn’t compromised confidentiality.

“People know at any time who’s off and who’s not. And they can look at the daily schedule to see who is here, so therefore, they can also look to see who’s off, so even if they weren’t looking at this filter, they could go back and have more information in the view, but they’d still have access to the information, so there’s no issue of breaching any confidentiality,” said Beck.
Members love the transparency.

“That’s what they like the most about it. Not only can they look at it on a computer, but they can go to their phone app and see who’s working when. That’s been one of the most popular parts of the program to everybody else. At first, they were a little hesitant about doing scheduling and seeing all that online rather than the paper calendar they were used to, but we’ve been using it now — we’re in our second year of using the program, now people love it.”

“We use a payroll program that’s so old that it doesn’t integrate with Aladtec. So (Aladtec Support) set up a spreadsheet that we’re able to run a report out of Aladtec and paste it into the spreadsheet to run all of our overtime payroll. Now, we have a shared filter so that we ensure that every single time, we’re using the exact same filter and getting the exact same information from the system that we need.

“We were thrilled to get it it’s been great for us, because when someone says ‘I can’t see that,’ I can either point them to the shared filter or I can make a filter that shows them what they need.”

Danville Life Saving and First Aid Crew

Melissa Dabbs, the system administrator for Danville (VA) Lifesaving Crew, immediately used the new feature to share her custom versions of DLC’s Time Clock and Scheduled Time Reports for supervisors and payroll.

“Few users fully understand how to set the MANY filter options to obtain specific, useful results, and sometimes it takes several tries to get the right combination.  Now, I build a custom report, and instead of trying to duplicate the report for multiple users at various sites,  I make a phone call,” Dabbs wrote. “I’m very glad this feature was added! It will improve our consistency, and allow us to write documentation on view/export/report procedures.”

Danville Life Saving and First Aid Crew handle 911 ambulance transport for the city of Danville, Virginia, as well as non-emergency convalescent transport. About 140 paid staff and volunteers operate the non-profit service. Danville is a city of about 45,000, located along the southern border of Virginia, some 70 miles south of Lynchburg.