[Geoff Pimlatt]

Hi JT,

We don’t have one consolidated solution, but instead rely on a couple of different platforms across the departments in our SU.

We are using Mazevo for building services / events asset management, having made the switch from EMS in March. It’s early days, with little activity since end of fall term, but I have not heard any complaints from the staff who use it regularly!

That crew, along with our Food and Beverage team, use HotSchedules for tracking part time labour. We have been customers for probably close to a decade, so again it seems to fit our needs.

On the IT side, we have been using Freshservice as both inventory management and ticketing platfor since January. We switched from TopDesk, and have found Freshservice to be a better solution on both counts.

I’m happy to chat individually or set up a Zoom for the CoP if there seems to be interest in a broader discussion on this topic.

Best,

Geoff

[JT McLoughlin]

Hey Geoff,

It sounds like we’re in the same boat with some different picks. I’ve heard good things about Mazevo.

A roundtable to share experiences with whoever’s interested would be great!

[michael.gjesdal@sdstate.edu]

Sounds like we have had a lot of the same/similar experiences. I have consolidated to two ecosystems – neither are perfect but its the best compromise Ive found. EMS acts as the actual reservation for events. We have a generic version of our A/V inventory in EMS and do estimates, bill, and generic customer communication through EMS. Then I have the Microsoft Teams side (More O365 side) In which I use to communicative with our Event Services student staff. We use “Shifts” (in Teams) to schedule staff. We use “Lists” in conjunction with OneDrive, and PowerAutomate to create and automate event info sheets, event reports, and share media with (internal) customers.

EMS is great at the reservation side of things but as far as inventory management. It can. But not very well. Its difficult to make batch edits. Inventory tracking doesn’t consistently track inventory when using packages. I have our general inventory in EMS, so for example I have twelve 15″ monitors in EMS. It doesn’t track a unique ID to each speaker type nor can I scan or check it out within EMS. But If I sell a couple band packages that uses up all 12 I do get a notification saying I’m out of that item. Rentman is really nice but for the price and inconvenience of a separate system- I decided against it.

The Teams side, Shifts has been good. I do recommend it, only if you have O365 available to you. Again, it is far from perfect. Its a bit clunkly, difficult to copy paste things around. The worst is that it doesn’t always update shifts for staff- though it appears to be fine from the user’s end. This requiring staff to delete and reinstall the app. Happens maybe 2x a year but missing a gig due to this is no good. I simply encourage staff to delete and reinstall at the beginning of each semester now. Teams itself has been solid for our communication and sharing of information. Only other complaint is that is a bit slow due to the bloat. But the bloat is a pretty good feature overall. With some work from Power Automate it gets to be quite slick.

I did try Asset Tiger. It was fine but only if you really keep up on it (like any asset manager) and I… could not. I love the idea of scanning an item and sending it out/checking it in and making repair notes. For us it didn’t help our workflow. We are small enough where If I run out of equipment, I likely don’t have enough labor so being that granular doesn’t help for the type of work we do. So, like you, I have labels for everything but I’m not actually tracking anything on an individual item level anymore. For our group, I dont miss it other than for tracking repairs, etc.

[JT McLoughlin]

Hey Michael,

It really does sound like we’ve both been down the same roads. I wish there was a product like Rentman that integrated with EMS via API or similar. Our office did a trial of Deputy scheduling that promised it syncs to EMS, but that feature wasn’t piloted and it quickly fell off.

A performing arts facility across campus has had luck with Shifts as well, but their team is significantly smaller and they only have two venues. Out of curiosity how many folks do you have on Shifts? Any capability to create linked events (a cappella groups with a rehearsal one night and performance another, etc.)? We’re already on the Microsoft ecosystem, but I haven’t explored that product yet.

[michael.gjesdal@sdstate.edu]

Our student tech staff fluctuates between 12-16 people. Shifts is quite limited so I only use it to communicate the shift name, when the shift is and what type of shift if it. We do green for load in, B]blue for event, red for load out and purple for other – meetings, shop, office, training. The students have all found their preferred way of tracking their time (its not the built in tracker). Keeping details out of the shifts help force the techs to read the event information sheets and supporting documentation that are provided in OneDrive. During or after their shifts they fill out an event report detailing the event and the hours worked. The report template is created at the time the automation runs to create the event in Lists. All the techs have to do is update their information in that List item. So Shifts cant link events but we can keep it together working out of the event created in Lists. Shifts is great only because is wrapped up in Teams so I force it to work for us and put up with the quirks. I would not use it as a standalone product