Booking System

We were asked to design a system to handle the booking and placement of nurses in hospitals around the country. The new application had to work with the in-house payroll system and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and had to be accessible to staff used to their own paper-based systems.

Challenges

Our client is an international recruitment organisation, with branches worldwide. In order that users should feel comfortable with the new application, it would have to appear as a component of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and so delivered through a web browser; however, the application would also have to be portable for use outside of a CRM environment, and must keep user screens updated in real time (not requiring a page refresh).

Solution and Benefits

We designed and built a web application using open-source components to give a 'look and feel' that closely matched that of the company's CRM software, and with supporting server technologies to keep users' screens constantly updated with bookings and nurse availability. The application uses its own database to handle bookings and reporting, and communicates with CRM for contact information, but can be switched to 'standalone' mode, where it is able to be deployed to remote offices without reliable connection to the company network, and function fully.

The new software means:

  • Candidates for placement can be searched based upon varied criteria like preferred hours, skills, experience and (nurse or client) preferences;
  • Shift hours and rates, which vary amongst hospital groups and trusts, are automatically calculated;
  • Timesheets are tallied with booked hours and payroll codes to ensure correct pay and charge rates;
  • Daily, weekly and ad-hoc reports for management and clients give a snapshot or longer-term view of outstanding placements, missed bookings, cancellations and so on;
  • User screens communicate asynchronously with the server to maintain a real-time view of bookings, so any change to booking or placement status shows up on all user displays;
  • Login is integrated, so users are automatically identified from their network login and don't have another name and password to remember.
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