MasterLibrary Blog

​With school budgets under a microscope and districts needing to comply with strict cleaning and sanitation guidelines due to the pandemic, examining your school’s work order system is a timely and responsible activity. If your district is not currently utilizing software to manage your work orders there are some good reasons why now is the time to look. For less money than you think, it’s a necessary upgrade in today’s reality.

​Finding the right facility use software is tricky if you have never analyzed different solutions available. For school districts, it’s important to find a system that is flexible to fit how you manage facility reservations today. Finding a solution that can support and streamline your current process as opposed to completely changing it, will make it easier for staff to use and adopt the system. Below is an infographic we put together that highlights some key features in a facility scheduling software system. We hope this helps as you look for the right solution!

In our most recent user group meeting, we spotlighted our enhanced reporting and dashboards. For district admins, superintendents and other district building stakeholders, having facility reports and dashboards that are easy to read and presented in a clean, modern format helps create bigger impact and better understanding of what’s going on in your buildings. Most school facility scheduling software solutions have some basic out-of-the-box reporting, but it is typically restrained to certain parameters making it hard to customize and is not easy to share or export. ​

Many school districts are still using a paper-based or manual approach to facility use request management.  In these districts, it’s typically a process that has been around for decades and most likely follows the old adage of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” It’s most likely a process that isn’t broken and probably functions ok, albeit a time-consuming one. At some point, even the smoothest manual systems have breakdowns and points in time where staff members question if there’s a better way. Manual systems often suffer when senior staff retire or move to other districts, taking years of knowledge about the system with them.

​With buildings re-opening during this pandemic, facility and maintenance staff will be required to follow strict cleaning and disinfecting protocols. ML Work Orders is a facility management platform that allows maintenance staff to follow, record and report on recurring cleaning protocols and preventative maintenance tasks. It can also track and manage inventories of supplies to stay on top of having your essential cleaning and sanitizing items on hand. Our enhanced dashboards produce dynamic and simple visuals to monitor statuses of on-going cleaning tasks, inventory levels, and other key metrics that may be necessary to report on. It’s important to note that we are showing examples of how a user could ML Work Orders to manage their protocols. For actual guidance on what those protocols should be, please consult the CDC’s website. Let's take a closer look.