About goRoster
goRoster has been helping people schedule their staff and create employee rosters
online since 2006.
In the beginning
The need for an online rostering system arose in 2005 when one of the goRoster directors
was having difficulty communicating shifts to his staff at a bar and restaurant
he owned. Staff rosters were consuming a lot of his manager's time, not just in
terms of the design and build, but managing leave, preferred hours, and employee
records. Additionally, it was difficult to get a good estimate of wage cost for
a given day, meaning budget blowouts were a frequent occurrence.
With these things in mind,
Global Office - a leading Christchurch software development company - was
contacted, and discussions began around developing an internet based rostering system
that could handle all of the above requirements. As discussions progressed and proof
of concepts were created, the scope of the system grew and the first version of
goRoster was released in early 2006 to a limited number of customers.
This system allowed users to manage employee details, create business units and
jobs that employees could work, and create shifts using text based entry and a graph representation of the roster.
Shifts were able to be communicated to staff via SMS and email messaging, and confirmation
of these shifts by staff members could be received by goRoster via return SMS/email.
Version 2 - Enhanced usability, extra features
Demand for the system soon grew, and in conjunction with our existing customers
we established a feature list for version 2 of the software. Little used features
were removed, and the shift designer interface was completely rewritten allowing
users to drag and draw shifts easily. More importance was placed on user interface
features, to improve usability and to make creating a roster far easier, and faster.
Version 2 was released in late 2006 and was met with huge success.
Feedback from new and existing customers was greatly received, and allowed goRoster
to develop organically. Features that were in high demand were added and a release
early, release often mantra was employed. New features such as multi-site support,
communication groups and revenue centres were developed and released, along with
an expanded staff details section that managed differing pay rates and alerts for expiring qualifications.
Third generation software
With the emergence of
Microsoft Silverlight as a development platform, the goRoster developers
began investigating new ways of improving the roster designer using this technology.
Improved UI programming languages together with a roadmap of future enhancements
and refinements to existing features, saw goRoster begin development on what is
now version 3 of the software.
As always, developers worked closely with goRoster's existing customers. Version 3 was
developed with many existing customers eager to help us trial the beta version.
After months of design and development, 6 months in beta and with much anticipation,
goRoster version 3 was officially released in May 2010.
Find out how goRoster can help you save time
and money.