So, I wrote this app...

[TheSHAD0W]

One of the things I've been doing is helping out with code work on the Megatokyo Visual Novel project (the Kickstarter was mentioned here before). Organizing, scripting, all sorts of stuff. One of the problems I was presented with was the vast scope of the project. We had an enormous flowchart for the little bit that was originally charted out, and just setting up consistent labels for all the jumps between parts was going to be an enormous mess.

Well, I decided that, we were basing this on a flowchart, so maybe the project should be implemented as a flowchart. And I started work on renpedit.



This turned into a pretty neat project, and seems to work well. It's designed to let you store and edit a flowchart referencing all the code in the project (or a section of it), with blocks of code being in separate files, draw lines to organize the flow between them, and then compile it all for the game. If you ever thought of writing a visual novel, Ren'py is a good choice; and if that project is at all large, consider renpedit for your organization.

But this system might be good for more than just visual novels; can any of you come up with other systems where having a flowchart that's automatically converted into code would come in handy?

[EricKei]

Programming in general, for one. Planning out how you want things to work in your prog of any type is useful.

Setting up a schedule at a place of work, perhaps -- e.g., setting states such as Unavailable/Available/Required, and substates, e.g., Unavailable could have "Out of town" (absolutely unavailable/trying to schedule that person should throw an error message) or "Last Resort" (they can come if there REALLY is no other choice) -- "Available" could have "Recurring" (carry them over in that slot from week to week when possible) and "Preferred" (this worker should be first choice for this slot), "Trainee" (must be scheduled *in addition to* an experienced worker who normally covers that area), "Manager1/2/3", etc. The chart portion could be used to fill a specific work slot once most of it is done.

PS, it says 'crying' near the top and 'teary-eyed' later, for what I presume is the same state I'm guessing this is just an example page, tho.

[TheSHAD0W]

Setting up a schedule at a place of work, perhaps...

Well, a flowchart wouldn't work well as a schedule, they're two different classes of data structure. It'd be better to write a scheduling system from scratch.

PS, it says 'crying' near the top and 'teary-eyed' later, for what I presume is the same state I'm guessing this is just an example page, tho.

You get to label the flowchart elements however you want, so it's not quite related. Here is the full example page which also shows the resulting Ren'py (which is somewhat based on Python) code.

[EricKei]

I probably should have been more clear. I meant using a FC as a way to decide for those last few slots that aren't always obvious who can go in , not for the entire thing (tho a computer could certainly use the logic of one to determine a chart along the way) -- certainly better than the way they did it as GameStore...I could swear they just threw darts at a huge calendar and used whatever stuck x.x

[Dreamstalker]

That's how my store does scheduling, I swear...I don't make a lot of schedule requests, so when I do have something inflexible it gets ignored.

[TheSHAD0W]

If you want me to put together some free, intelligent scheduling software - and think you can get your stores to use it - let me know. :-P

[Aethian]

Shadow, do you mean this as a Android/iOS app?

[TheSHAD0W]

Shadow, do you mean this as a Android/iOS app?

Now that I've done some thinking about it, the scope gets rather broad.

It'd really need to be a web-based app; there might be phone apps which would also connect with it, or use a phone browser.

It'd need a way for employees to specify their availability, as yes/maybe/no. It'd also need a way for employees to be able to trade shifts.

It'd need a way for managers to specify what employees are able to do what things, how many of each are needed for each shift, and whether there are conflicts between scheduling certain employees together or apart.

And it all has to be dead-nuts simple to operate, resistant to the abuse of the coworkers you curse out and to the managerial morons. It wouldn't be impossible to abuse, but it'd be nice to make it difficult.

It also seems like it'll be lots of work. :-P

[mjr]

You can use flowcharts to make friends.

[Aethian]

Shadow, I seem to remember something like that when I worked at Meijer's. We could give input on our schedules up to 48 hours before, after that it had to be discussed with managers.

My boyfriend has a app in mind that will keep track of when someone punches in and out so that they have a good idea of how much they are going to make on that paycheck. Which will also help keep track to make sure there aren't payroll errors.

[Dreamstalker]

Sadly I think my company uses 'predictive scheduling' software that's tied into the time clock; the basic fatal flaw seems to be that you never know whether the right person actually looked at the availability requests book (yes, we still have a paper binder*). So the issue that needs to be addressed there is making sure someone pays attention to requests.

* You'd think they would let employees make requests online--there must be a way to funnel all requests from employees at Store X directly to Store X's system. But knowing the clowns I work with that would be shut down very quickly due to abuse...

Aethian, that sounds like a great idea. I use my phone's memo function to note down my schedule, but that's not perfect.

[Aethian]

Dreamstalker, he's currently working on a app to track meds. You hit a button that says you took the med and it takes one from the quanity. When you have 14-7 left it throws up a warning to re order till your out. It's just taking awhile to get everything to play nicely with everything else.