In/Out Board
From PikaDocs
Especially with a statewide organization and a distributed intake system to contend with, locating (or at least knowing the location of) staff becomes both important and difficult. In Iowa we implemented an In/Out Board system that lets us keep track of staff movements. Several of the features are from the standard Pika user admin screen, but it's been highly adapted for use in tracking location.
At the top we have 3 filter options:
- Staff
- Office
- Intake Unit
Staff, of course filters for an individual staff member, Office will filter based on the user table's up_office field (which has been replaced in it's original usage by an array element, but is still used here). We refer to this field now as the user's "Home" office as opposed to the user changeable preference. Intake unit is actually a newly added feature (for those of you who already use the In/Out Board) that filters based on a list kept in a "Menu" table. This allows a separate filter "layer" in addition to the office. Our intake unit spans several offices, but has an even greater need to keep up on the whereabouts of other intake unit personnel.
Below the filter section we have a set of input menus and fields for setting a staff members status, whereabouts and return estimate. Any staff member can change the info for any other, so, someone could ask a receptionist on their way out to set it for them, or call in sick, etc. Both the "Where" field and the "Expected Return" have both menus and freeform fields, so that either "canned" common responses, or fully free-form responses can be made.
Below that is the display area, where status ("IN" or "OUT") is displayed, followed by Name, Description, Where, Last Active, Returning and links to that staff's calendar.
A couple less-obvious features:
- The "Name" link is a "MAILTO:" link
- Hovering over the name will display the contents of another custom "menu" resource.
