[kronolith] kronolith as the perfect solution

[Rick Emery]

Sorry it's a little long, but I think the background is important.

I work for a law enforcement agency with an aviation unit (three helicopters).
The shifts are 12.25 hours long, from 5:45 until 6:00 (5:45 am until 6:00 pm
and 5:45 pm until 6:00 am). There are at least two aircrew on duty at a time,
one pilot and one flight officer (the pilot flies while the flight officer does
everything else; e.g. radio communication, camera/VCR, binoculars, FLIR,
spotlight, etc). There are two full-time night-time flight officers and
numerous volunteer day-time flight officers, many from different agencies (I
work for the county sheriff's office, others work for city police departments
within the county, and some work for the highway patrol).

The guy coordinating the schedule requests a list of days that each volunteer
flight officer can work, and builds a schedule from that list. Until I started
working out there, he was doing the schedule using Microsoft Word calendar
wizard. He would complete the schedule (there were always some vacant days),
email it to each flight officer, print it, and post it on the wall at the
hangar. Flight officers were encouraged to write their names in on vacant days
that they could work. The problem is that an updated schedule was never sent
out to the flight officers, so the updates could only be seen by driving out to
the hangar to look at the schedule. Additionally, the schedule would sometimes
need to be changed. The changes were sometimes handled by the scheduler from
home. Let me explain this problem with an example.

I was scheduled to work Oct 22. After the schedule was posted, the scheduler
called me and asked me to work Oct 15 instead, and I agreed. When I showed up
on the 15, I saw that the change was never made on the schedule and they had
gotten someone else to cover it; our phone conversation had apparently been
forgotten. This was just an inconvenience, but could have gone the other way
where I wouldn't have shown up on a day they thought I was scheduled.

I tried to come up with a solution that would make the schedule available
online, so that I (and the rest of the volunteers) could periodically check it
and verify the days we were expected to work. It would also provide a
continually updated list of vacant days for which to sign up.

At first, we tried putting the calendar (the Word files) on a network share.
This, however, prevented anyone from checking the schedule from home.

Next, we created a calendar in the public folders section of our Exchange server
(we use Outlook for the Web to access stuff from home). However, flight
officers from other agencies couldn't access it.

That's when it occured to me: With kronolith, I was using a calendar that was
accessible from any internet-connected computer. With the permissions system
that was in place, and the categories, it was perfect.

So, I created an account on my server for the scheduler, used that account to
create a "flight officer" calendar, and set up categories with different colors
for each of the four shifts and "vacant". I set his options so that it used
kronolith for the application to show on login, and changed his horde
preference to hide the side menubar (I have limited storage space and didn't
want him to start using my server as a public email system). I then made
kronolith available to guests, and gave them read access to the flight officer
calendar.

It's worked out beautifully so far. He can make changes to the calendar from
home or work. All of the flight officers can access the schedule from any
intenet-connected computer through guest services, and can even print it. The
scheduler is very pleased, and (with the color-coded categories) thinks it
looks much better than anything he came up with using Word or Outlook. It's
worked out better than I could have hoped. I'm even thinking about setting up
another calendar just for him so that he can enter everybody's available days,
then show it side-by-side with the schedule (if that's possible; I'm still
looking into it).

This extremely long email is simply my way of saying a great big *THANKS* to
everybody for all of the hard work. Horde (and its apps) is the best software
product I've experienced; it's certainly the one I use most!

--
Rick Emery

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth
 with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there
 you will always long to return"
                                              -- Leonardo Da Vinci