The consistency of screens across iSAMS makes a huge difference to its useability. Likewise, providing on-screen cues as to default or currently-selected settings also makes a difference to useability.
We were finding that staff marked unavailable in the Cover Manager module were still popping up in the Cover Rota as available to provide cover. We have since discovered what the issue was. I have attached screenshots to illustrate the issue.
When setting absences, by default, the time range is set to All Day, so from midnight to 23.59. Notice that there is no visual highlighting on the screen to indicate that All Day has been selected. Even when you explicitly click on All Day, there is still no on-screen clue to the fact that you have clicked it.
When setting unavailable staff, if you are used to defaulting to All Day with absences, there is no visual indication that this hasn’t already been defaulted to. In this case, you have to explicitly click the All Day option. Again, even when you have done this, there is no on-screen clue that you have clicked this option (as opposed to one of the other options).
The only clue in both cases is the change of the end time.
What’s happened here is that the team is so used to having All Day pre-selected for absences, that they hadn’t realised that this wasn’t the case for unavailable staff. So, in effect, they were making staff unavailable from 00.00 to 00.00, i.e. no time at all.
The issue here is an inconsistency in the defaults between the two screens, coupled with the lack of clear on-screen cues as what defaults are in play.
Please make the defaults consistent and provide clearer on-screen clues, e.g. highlighting buttons, to make it more obvious to the end user what settings are in play.
