April 13th 2006 @ 1PM - Docent Coordinator at a Museum Interview in San Francisco

This is another effort to reach out into the ‘real world’ to meet target users for Chandler 0.7.

Information about the person being interviewed:

• Female, (25+ yrs old) urban professional living/working in the San Francisco/Bay Area
• Schedules the public/school (educational) docent tours

Highlights

Coordinate Public Docents Tours

• Public docent tours are planned 3 months in advance.
• I'll send out scheduling cards in the mail, asking their availability for the next 3 months.
• They fill out information such as what they'd like to be touring and on a certain date they are due and are returned by mail.
• The public docent information is put onto a an excel worksheet and is worked until it is more finalized.
• “It's visually easy see everything that's going on.” And easier to see everything then the Vista calendar.
• The information is then plugged into the Vista 4.1, created by Ticketmaster.
• Vista is the program used within the museum, it processes tickets for entrance fees as well as manage tour dates

Coordinate School Doecents Tours

• With the help of the docent council, send out a fact sheet. Also send the fact sheet through the mail to know the docent's availability.
• A lot of teachers changes dates quite often and “we're often caught in phone tag”
• Uses a lot of different materials when working with teachers. Uses a small (personal) paper calendar for “sketching things out”
• “It's forever changing the schedule”
• Cancelling the date is a difficult to do in Vista. After booking a sale, you can't delete it, you have to void it. And then you have a lot of information you don't need on the calendar/system.
• Maintains two Outlook calendar. One for coordinating an Education tour calendar for teens/college students. Once it's finalized, it's put it into Vista
• The other Outlook calendar has personal meetings (such as lunch w/ friends) and work meetings

Comments

MimiYin 20060517 A couple of interesting things I noticed when listening to the recorded interview:

• She uses an Excel spreadsheet to manage the tours. Vista hides a lot of stuff. You can't just look at it and see stuff at a glance.
• While she has a lot of 'projects' going on at once, coordinating and scheduling dozens of people across many different organizations (Docents, Schools, Different Departments within the museum), her projects are relatively concrete and predictable. They have a set procedure: 1st. I sent out an availability request...then I print out confirmation letter...I sent ou FAQ...etc.
• She isn't tasked with amorphous things like: Figure out a good tour scheduling procedure.
• Something else interesting she said: I need to have my own calendar in addition to VISTA because I can't see just the tours I'm scheduling in VISTA. She spends a lot of time shuttling data between her personal system (Excel + Outlook) and the collaboration tool the museum uses (Vista). If she could sync her personal system with the Vista system, that would save her from a lot of manual effort.

What does your job entail?

• Coordinates all the public and school tours
• Elementary school (grades 3 - 8) average about 30 students on a tour. They have a tour every morning.
• Middle school high school average about 35 students, one or two a day, excluding Wednesday, Saturday & Sunday.
• Teen tours average 35 students on a tour 1 or 2 a day excluding Wed, Sat & Sun
• Certified self guided tour, non docent guided w/ teachers, they have about 40 students have two of those a week.
• Tours for college students, averagae about one every two weeks.
• Public tours are offered about 4-6 times per day
• Docent lead tours average about 8 to 30 people on the tours

Planning for Public Docents

• Public docent tours are planned 3 months in advance (per period).
• I'll send out scheduling cards in the mail, asking their availbiliity for the next 3 months.
• They fill out information such as what they'd like to be touring and on a certain date they are due.
• The information is put onto an excel worksheet and is worked until it is more finalized. It is then later put into Vista 4.1, created by Ticketmaster.
• “It's visually easy see everything that's going on.” And easier to use then the Vista calendar.
• The museum uses Vista as the main calendar (throughout the office)
• The excel calendar is used a 'work sheet', able to see the docent titles and times easily, make changes etc.
• Eventually all the tours are then plugged into Vista
• “…vista is really good at capturing everything throughout the museum on one calendar. All of the departments use this calendar and you can easily check who is in what room in the koret center or in which galleries for which event and using what resources (for example movie projectors, laptops or which docent!)”.
• Able to see the docents, names and titles on the excel--> work sheet
• Vista it hides a lot of information.
• “…the down fall to this is that sometimes there is so much going on on any given day that sorting through the various events to find my tours is tough. Which is another reason why I like to work on excel or the outlook calendar before entering events onto vista.”

Planning for School Docents

• School 3-8 schedule twice a year
• With the help of the docent council, send out a fact sheet. Also send the fact sheet through the mail to know the docent's availability.
• The school docents are put on a team, so they know they are going to be touring on a Mon, Tues, or Friday for the first semester of the school year
• Uses a lot of differnt materials when working with the teachers and eventually put everything in to Vista
• Uses a small paper calendar for sketching "it all out" when working with the teachers (lots more changes)
• At the same time I'm contacting teachers on the phone to schedule a lot of times teachers change (dates/times) quite often
• A lot of teachers changes dates quite often and “we're often caught in phone tag”
• In Vista when you book a sale, you can't delete it. You can void it, but when you sell tickets into it you can delete it
• Until have I have things pretty set, I don't go into Vista
• Cancelling a date is a difficult to do in Vista. After booking a sale, you can't delete it, you have to void it. And then you have a lot of information you don't need on the calendar/system.
• It's forever changing the schedule”

Planning Teen/College Students (tailored self guided tours)

• Also send out a fact sheet by mail to the docents asking for their availability, confirm dates for the next semester
• Call or email to schedule a tour, when they want to schedule
• I work on my Outlook calendar, an education calendar through Outlook
• I also have my personal calendar and my personal meetings as well as my personal lunch dates with friends etc.
• I put my lunch date my Outlook calendar as well
• Puts the information on Outlook because a lot of teacher due to transportation, and need to clear it with their school administration, I can hold a date for them and have them back to me.
• Once the date is cleared and finalized, I'll put it into Vista
• What I do on Vista create a teen tour, book a sale into that event.
• Vista is also used for tracking booked sales, transactions

What happens when a teacher calls after the information is on Vista?

• When it's on Vista and need to voids on Vista-->is pretty much a a pain to do
• Can go in and void her tickets, change sale to cancel.
• Need to physically change the event on a differnt tour time.
• The tour date will remain on the Vista calendar and create in a different event not a clean calendar in the end
• Good to trace cancelations, make notes in a memo field--> change this date to that date, but there's a lot of information that doesn't need to be there
• Run reports later
• Make notes in the memo field--> to change this date to that date run reports, a lot of info that doesn't need to be there.

Do you ever need to send information to the teachers to bring, what not to bring? How you do communicate this information to them?

• If I'm on the phone with the teacher I'll tell them some of the information on what to thing, answer any of their questions etc.
• Yes, it's generally communicated through e-mail.
• Once I have a docent in place for the tour, I physically send (print out and send by mail) a confirmation in Vista to the docents and the same goes for the teacher (from Vista)
• Information on how to tour, what should I expect, what bring answer any questions, maps
• Vista - confirmation letter
• Also send out an official letter (from word) to mail to the teacher
• This may also include a FAQ
• The lead docents will be responsible for calling/contacting the teacher, usually done via email, to confirm the tour date/info.
• This has been done so the docent will have more of a personal touch with the teacher

Aggregating Data

• Aggregate data through Vista
• Ongoing need from other departments who need up to date information
• Information may include what schools we serve, zip codes, what counties etc.
• Problem with Vista because you can write your own reports.
• They have reports you have to choose from
• Running multiple reports to different information, not all the information on one report

Other Notes

• The tour calendars used to created in Outlook, but is now all done in Vista
• All the tours happening on Vista is printed and placed in the touch down office and in the docent library
• A lot of docents have mentioned they would like to have a web version of the calendar (to see who is touring what show/floor that day)
  
• Sometimes the special exhibitions are not planned three months in advance
  
• The timeslots are sometimes left blank (on the early calendars printed out) because the tour times for the special exhibitions are not yet finalized, whereas the permenant collection tour times are