Likelihood to Recommend Frontline is well suited for an organization such as a school district where teachers sometimes need to put in for a substitute at the last minute or especially early in the morning. The system also helps with substitutes in picking up the jobs when a teacher puts in an absence.
Read full review We continue to remain the only professional baseball team that utilizes NOVAtime for our scheduling of staff, mostly because it was designed to schedule hospital workers. The lag time when updating the ASM is extremely time consuming and the inability to work in multiple internet tabs or windows makes it that much more inefficient. I am sure it is a fantastic system for other organizations but it continues to be a challenge for us.
Read full review Pros Easily submission process. Select the day you need to schedule on the listed calendar, mark the type of request, and submit. Works on different digital devices including phones, tablets, and computers. Easily track your balances by looking at your account history. Delete requests you have already submitted. Read full review The report database is very extensive--there is a report for everything Easy to use Various ways for EEs and supervisors to access information Read full review Cons Teachers cannot cancel their own absence. We have to ask the office staff to do so. This is irritating when an absence must be canceled (Due to a canceled professional development, for example). Sometimes absences go unfilled. It would be great if AESOP could have a roster of qualified substitutes to cover absences. You cannot assign your absence to a particular substitute if you know he or she is available and a good fit for your absence. Read full review There does need to be more support and knowledge when it comes to alternate workweek schedule types (9/80, etc.), as there have been a few unique challenges with those. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Long time customer with Frontline Absence Management. Product support has been excellent, integrations easy to work with, & suite of products mesh together well.
Read full review The overall satisfaction within the organization has been luke warm, at best. The software may be more conducive for a hospital but I believe there is a reason why we are the lone baseball team utilizing it.
Read full review Usability While we have had minor issues logging in as our organization has its own login page, the site and its application are very easy to use. So long as members of a group log in through the appropriate page, navigating and using this site is quite easy. With the transition from Aesop to Frontline, the page also seems to have worked through any glitches found with the previous page and its app.
Read full review On the employee's side of things, Novatime is pretty intuitive and fairly easy to use. All they have to do is either press a button to punch in or punch out. If they are entering in their hours, all they have to do is type in the number of hours per day. On the manager's side of things, Novatime is also fairly easy to use. It highlights in red any missed punches and in green any OT that the employee has. There are links on the homepage of the manager's page that will lead them to a list of all their employees' missed punches for a pay period and they can fix them all before payroll is due. Novatime becomes a bit more complicated on the administrator's side. The issues I have run into with Novatime normally come after updates/upgrades to their system. They have been getting better, but the administrator's side is still a bit clunky and takes a while to find what you are looking for. It is not as intuitive as the other sides and takes a bit of computer knowledge to figure it out.
Read full review Reliability and Availability There have been several times the system was unavailable. When there has been an issue, Frontline HAS NOT notified us....which has been disappointing.
Read full review Performance No issues reported by end users of slow or not loading pages.
Read full review Support Rating Internal support is provided by EDU Staff based out of Grand Rapids. Whenever I have had an issue they are very responsive to my needs. For instance, there may be conflicts in the amount of money that was listed for the contract. There may be questions about the length of an assignment such as 1/2 day, full day, or early dismissal. The school will sometimes enter the wrong information. Very good IT support, but sometimes you are on hold for 5 to 10 minutes because they do not have enough workers in their Call Center
Read full review The program itself can be customized in many different ways to meet the needs of the company/organization that it is working with. The charts/graphs on the new homepage are somewhat helpful and link to useful information. It has some really nice scheduling features that allow managers to see the difference between hours expected to work and actual hours worked as well as overtime, absences, and non-scheduled shifts. Processing payroll is quite simple. PTO request off is straightforward.
Read full review In-Person Training Our Implementer/Trainer was a product line expert. He (Connor) walked us through every step with confidence and explained everything in detail. Frontline provided written documentation, cut-n-paste emails to staff, and a test environment for us to play in. We were able to test unique scenarios without actually sending emails, notifications, alerts to staff. This was very useful.
Read full review Implementation Rating Our Frontline implementer was an expert in the field & knew the product in & out. We had very little issues going live.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Frontline seems to be the industry standard for this software in the education industry. I am not familiar with any competitors or what was evaluated prior to implementing Frontline. For it to be the industry standard, I would assume that its cost is fair in relation to competitors and that the onboarding process is simple.
Read full review The product is easy to use, and everyone picks up on it quickly. It is less expensive, and has more to offer than any other product I’ve found.
Read full review Scalability Our district has approximately 300 substitutes & 1,800 employees. Size has never been an issue with Absence Management. There are other districts much larger using Absence Management with no problems
Read full review Return on Investment It's given staff direct access to inputting their absences and secure coverage quicker, whereas before they had to make a call to a person. That person had to secure coverage for the entire district at different levels. Sometimes that person was absent or unable to provide coverage. Read full review We have had a few scenarios where the PTO accrual dropped off and it did take 3 attempts of reaching out to customer service to get it sorted. The customer service team has collaborated with me in creating new PTO categories to automate certain needs to save me some time. Read full review ScreenShots