RecChat: Customer Spotlight - Irondequoit Recreation - 03/06/2020
Episode: 03/06/2020
Episode Summary
In this episode, our host, Zach Molloch is joined by Implementation Consultant, Eric Schmokel, as well as special guests Katrina Hall and Megan Hoffman representing the Irondequoit Recreation Department. The group discusses how Irondequoit Recreation is currently utilizing RecTrac, shares tips and tricks for a smooth 3.1 migration, and outlines how the tools provided by Vermont Systems will help them grow and better serve the Irondequoit community.
Video
Transcript
Zach Malloch 0:00
Alright, and we are live with a very special customer spotlight edition of RecChat our second ever. And we have some very special guests from Irondequoit Recreation joining us here today. And I'm joined in studio by a special guest, special guests all around. We'll take care of our in studio guests here. I'm joined by Eric Schmokel, our implementation consultants of the day who has worked with Irondequoit, and I believe you guys might still be muted. I don't know. Go ahead and say hi. Oh, let's see if we can hear you
Megan Hoffman 1:14
Hi guys.
Katrina Hall 1:14
Hi.
Zach Malloch 1:15
We can hear you! Perfect. So we are joined by Megan Hoffman and Katrina Hall from Irondequoit I would you guys like to introduce yourself just a little bit real quick.
Katrina Hall 1:27
Sure. So my name is Katrina Hall, and I'm the director of recreations of the town. I have worked for the town since 2011. And we're excited to be here.
Megan Hoffman 1:36
Awesome. Madam Hoffman. And I have worked for the town since 2000. And I'm currently the lead RecTrac user.
Zach Malloch 1:45
Excellent. Very, very happy to have you guys here. I realized I didn't introduce myself, that has to happen. I'm Zack, manager of the education department here at VSI. And so the whole idea with the customer spotlight is to get a little bit of insight into how different customers are using the software. I know Eric and I, from our implementation careers, have the opportunity to go on site and see a lot of different places. But a lot of people that use RecTrac really only see how their organization uses it. So Megan was very kind to respond to my or to volunteer as a subject for our customer spotlight experiments. And we're very happy to have you guys here. So I understand that you have a quick PowerPoint ready to go that can maybe give us a little bit of a background on what you guys are doing out there bringing up the share there we go. Okay. Now it's your show
Megan Hoffman 2:54
Ok. So we have been a VSI customers since April of 1997. So going on 23 years. Thank you start at 10.8 Maybe it's very funny looking at so old. So it's great to see where VSI has come since then.
Zach Malloch 3:13
Yeah, you, you guys as an organization have beat both Eric and my time here together.
Megan Hoffman 3:21
It actually we started becoming a customer of VSI before both Katrina and I were involved as well. So that's just our brief mission and affirmation statement. This is a picture of our playground program, we host a playground program for residents in the town. We have recently partnered with Rochester Accessible Adventures to become a more inclusive department to talk a little bit more about what that means for us.
Katrina Hall 3:48
Sure, so that we work with a representative from Rochester Accessible Adventures and we do site reviews of all of our facilities. We go over a strategic plan with them. We measure doorways, we measure that the weight of our doors, so it's pretty in depth. But it really helps us to make sure that we can serve every customer that comes through our door and it's a great it's a great tool to have and we're hoping as we go through the process that it grows even more. And obviously, we you know, based on the size of our department and our building now we have some challenges but the Rochester Accessible Adventures is great at teaching us how to move forward and still be inclusive even if you have challenges. So
Zach Malloch 4:29
that's awesome.
Megan Hoffman 4:32
Currently, we are a very small staff. We are ever growing though. We have 16 RecTrac users day to day basis. So we really have about 10 that use it mostly on the day to day basis. So we have a full time staff three part time staff and five part time seasonal staff in our McAvoy Park concession area. So we are a relatively small department. We put out three Activity Guide publications a year with all of our programs. And we average about just over 2100 dispensing programs.
Katrina Hall 5:05
And we've definitely grown with regards to activity guide publications. We started in 2012 with a dedicated recreation activity guide. And at that time, it had 12 pages. And we're now up to about 45 to 50 pages per season of program. So regardless of the size of our staff, we definitely offer a wide variety of programming and every year we've continued to grow. So that's kind of one thing that we're pretty proud of.
Zach Malloch 5:29
That's awesome. Do either of you guys get to wear the mascot uniforms?
Katrina Hall 5:33
That is, that is our token male staff Joe. As you can see, in some of the pictures, poor Joe is stuck with all of us females and he gets to wear typically gets to wear that or a high school volunteer,
Megan Hoffman 5:46
or mascot.
We're currently in the process of building a new community center. So on the left is our current Senator, we have less than 10,000 square feet, we do not have a dedicated gym space. So that makes it uniquely challenging at times to run programs, we definitely have to look outside the box for what the types of programs that we offer and how we're going to offer that. We are currently working on designs for our new center, hopefully opening in June of 2021.
Katrina Hall 6:21
We just started Demo at the old Irondequoit Mall. And so after the Demo is done in a couple of weeks, we can start the construction phase of that project.
Megan Hoffman 6:31
Moving to 42,000 square feet. And with that we'll have a gym, which we're all very excited for an indoor turf fitness center, Group X and dance studio area senior lounge, teen lounge.
Katrina Hall 6:47
So pretty much your your typical community recreation center. Currently we work out of a 1950s school building, so and it was a cater to school building. So it's definitely not made for recreation. So it'll be nice to have a center that's made for what the services that we you know, are providing.
Zach Malloch 7:03
And you're going to be doing some new services there too is if I understand correctly.
Katrina Hall 7:08
Yep, so we'll have memberships we've never had memberships before, we'll have a fitness center, we don't currently have a fitness center. So we'll definitely be utilizing a lot more services through RecTrac. And then obviously, in turn being able to offer a lot more services to the community.
Megan Hoffman 7:23
So currently, with our youth and family programming, we've put together about 300 programs a year. That works out to be just over 550 sections. Our most popular program is our summer camp program. We run a six week summer camp program for entering kindergarten up through eighth grade. And we also have a free a very unique free summer resident playground program where residents of Irondequoit can register and it's a add on local school district buildings. And it's a drop in Type of program.
Katrina Hall 7:57
So typically, we've seen you've seen in recreation departments for years in the past, there's always been a free drop in program and where we are locally, all the municipalities have gone to a pay based playground program and around equate is the only one that is still free. So it's, it's been in existence for over 50 years. It's definitely as you can see, we have 650 plus participants. So it's definitely something that is needed around here. It's it has its own unique challenges, but it's a service that we would never take away. But we've started to really modify it and and try to to rein it in with regards to just being a drop in program, but I think it's what really makes us unique, and stand out among the other municipalities.
Zach Malloch 8:42
carrying the torch for the community
Megan Hoffman 8:45
We also have a large adult and senior program of over 1600 participants we run a very large senior county nutrition program that offers daily lunch for the seniors of Irondequoit and in addition to that, we're the only one in the county that also offers a sandwich soup program as well. We have both men's and women's golf leagues and a very large senior softball league for 60 plus
Katrina Hall 9:11
55. And we get we get over over 300 men that come from all over the Rochester area and beyond and McEvoy Park has been has been noted as the home of softball legends. So our senior softball program really calls that home as you can see in one of the pictures, that's their home base Monday through Thursday morning from 8am until 1pm Every single day so
Zach Malloch 9:35
Very Nice
Megan Hoffman 9:38
that's I have a large special events department not in the size of the people running the department because it is definitely a group effort among them. But we do put on numerous events throughout the year we definitely are known as a festival town. We have large festivals such as Winterfest our July 4 festival I believe has over 20,000 people that attend. Oktoberfest usually has about seven or 8000 people that attend over the course of two weekends. Just added a couple of years ago at Halloween spooktacular and we have a weekly farmers market with entertainment as well and numerous family nights and movie nights throughout the summer.
Zach Malloch 10:20
So this is a good chance for a question. Um, so we have Eric here because he worked with you guys pretty extensively on your upgrade. Eric, did you get to experience some of the festival
Eric Schmokel 10:29
I was there when they were setting up for the Oktoberfest. So I can vouch there, the tent space they that they Build for the Oktoberfest tent is very, it's quite the site to say the building of that tent when we went down there was was quite amazing. And being somebody who has actually been to a German Oktoberfest. In fact, I grew up in Germany. It's it's a true Oktoberfest experience.
Zach Malloch 10:53
Right? You got seal of approval.
Megan Hoffman 10:55
Yes. It's
Katrina Hall 10:56
been in existence for 32 years if I'm correct, and maybe off a year, but about 32 years. So yeah, it's we have a tent about the size of two football fields. So it's quite large. Oh, yeah. Yeah, a
Megan Hoffman 11:07
lot of fun. Makes for two very fun weekend.
Katrina Hall 11:09
You get second German music. They're working till night. Yes, you can.
Megan Hoffman 11:19
We have numerous Field Rental spaces. So we have 12 rentable fields. They can be used for soccer, baseball, rugby, softball, and much more. Our largest ones are at backway Park and our camp Eastman fields. And then we also have the Rental use ballpark complex, and that has at least three softball fields. And we have throughout the town of veranda plate we have 10 Playground sites located throughout the community and one of them is a barrier free playground. And with that site, we also have a spray park, a dedicated spray park which it gets used quite a bit over the summer. The barrier free playground and the spray Parker look at it camp Eastman. This is where we do the majority of our facade all of our facility rentals. We have five cabins and lodges that are available for rent for parties and gatherings we have for soccer and lacrosse fields and 90 acres of active and passive recreation space.
Katrina Hall 12:14
In the summer, pretty much all of our cabins are booked for graduation parties, weddings, and you name it. That's the place to be in the summer. So that's nice.
Megan Hoffman 12:22
You're already currently booked, I believe for every weekend in July and August.
Katrina Hall 12:26
It's also the home to our day camp. So our kids our day camp, kids are there all summer. So it's full from from morning all the way through the evening. So it's quite a sight.
Megan Hoffman 12:37
It being used and lots of families recreating there, especially in the spring and summer months. Yeah. And obviously, we love vermont systems. We've been a customer for 23 years, we were thankful to migrate from 10, three to three, one in August. And thank you, Eric, for all of your help with how that went. And we just upgraded to the Next Gen UI in December. And we currently have activity facility and Point Of Sale modules. But we're looking to add both Pass Management with access control League Scheduling. And I don't know after hearing about kiosk mode, we might be adding that as well.
Zach Malloch 13:17
Self Service payemtns, alright. Okay, well, thank you so much for giving us a little bit of a baseline on Irondequoit, there's a T at the end, right, you pronounced the T Irondequoit. I'll try to do that on your promises. So we're going to just go into a little bit more of a free ranging discussion here. And if anybody has any questions for Megan and Katrina, please feel free to use the q&a and up for some something that you're super excited in or enter your own questions. And we'll certainly pose those. But so what are some of your ongoing goals that you guys have for Irondequoit recreation? I know you have the community center coming up?
Katrina Hall 14:02
Sure. So I think if I can speak to that, obviously, the Community Center is a big one. But Megan had mentioned in the PowerPoint that thinking outside the box is a huge goal of ours just because we don't have that traditional recreation facility. We challenge our staff every day to think outside the box to offer the same services that a town with a traditional recreation facility would be able to offer. So that goal will probably never go away regardless of our facility because that's where we come from, you know, we come from such a small building. And so that that is a major goal to us. I think another one is our rebranding. So we've gone through some changes over the last few years where we were a Department of Parks and Recreation. And then in 2015, we went to a Bureau of recreation underneath the umbrella of Community Services and DPW and public works. And then we grew so much that we proved that we actually needed to be a department of recreation. So this past rang, we became an official department of recreation again, with a director of recreation and more of a traditional style recreation department. So really our goal now moving forward is rebranding and now that we have this new community center on the horizon now that we're an official department of recreation, what does that look like? And what is what does that look like in the community and internally for staff?
Megan Hoffman 15:23
Definitely, RecTrac helps us with those goals, because it allows us to provide some accountability, both internally and externally, some consistency to our programming and our registration process. It allows us to streamline our process for both our staff and our customers. So whoever's doing registrations or happens to take the phone call, or is online at WebTrac, they're getting the same experience. And it also allows us to provide better customer service to our customers.
Katrina Hall 15:52
I think what we've liked in the new RecTrac, is the fact that or the WebTrac, I should say, is that we can put up the flyers, you know, the scrolling flyers on the right hand side, we can modify that almost like our own little website. So that's really helped us with our rebranding, because we have our own little site that we can kind of have control over and Megan's learned all of that HTML code, I don't have control over it. So it's just been nice, because we don't have to wait for somebody else to do it, we can kind of take the lead and, and design it a little bit ourselves. And so and then the give and take between us and Vermont systems, it's been nice to really make it our own. So,
Megan Hoffman 16:29
Eric, we do appreciate everything you did with helping us design that. And we're making it some teachable moments.
Eric Schmokel 16:36
My pleasure, you guys are obviously great to work with. And I'm really glad that you guys wanted to do the spotlight here and talk to everyone else about it. So
Zach Malloch 16:43
yeah. And actually so that, that leads to a couple of questions I wanted to talk about with challenges. And we we have a question already coming up. I'm gonna hold off on that just for a minute here. But I was curious. In this a two part question, feel free to answer any way you want to. But I was curious if there was a challenge that you guys faced during the migration with possibly training, moving things over and how you overcame that. And then the second part of that is, did you guys have any particular challenges that the new version of the software is able to help you fairly easily overcome?
Megan Hoffman 17:23
With training, I think it was definitely important. When we started our migration process, we really planned we started the process about a year and a half out with conversations and looking to see what our end goal was. It was great having the test Demo base week received that about a year out and really dived into that was learning the software. I created training sheets for our staff. So it was almost like we went back to school, we did worksheets, with different scenarios, almost like many word problems, and put staff through the paces in the Demo, the test Demo database, just getting as much practice and hands on as possible. Ideally, it would be great if we were able to get everything perfect. Still all learning the process as we go. And I think it definitely is important that staff need to be invested in it, because they get out of it, what they put into it. So I think that's been a challenge here. And they're a little bit we're give staff the tools for everything, but they really have to take ownership for it.
Katrina Hall 18:28
I think what I would say for a challenge, just to piggyback on that was really, it looked, and it looks completely different than 10.3, right. So it was a totally new system for us. And we have some staff that have quite the longevity in our department and then the town. And so they were very used to this one way. And so I think a challenge is just being able to work simultaneously in both train in one but perform your daily duties in the other. So that was somewhat of a struggle at times. But I will say Megan did a great job of you know, planning ahead and doing that whole year in advance and having those training worksheets. I think if we didn't do that, just switching over within a month, we would have been even more in more trouble than we were. So I think pre planning is huge. Just because it does look and feel completely different. I think it's much more user friendly than the other one, but it looks different. You know, regardless,
Megan Hoffman 19:18
so yeah, I think I like the 3.1 way better than 10.3, it looks better. It's cleaner. It's more condensed, nicer. It does play nicer. It's easy, I find it easier to use.I'm going to challenge that challenges to help us overcome.
Zach Malloch 19:37
Like when did you have, let's say maybe a pricing structure that was difficult in the previous versions that was maybe easier and the new one or automated rules to put things online.
Megan Hoffman 19:47
I think being able to work more with fees and rules and make it work to how we want it to work. It's not so black and white anymore. There's a lot of gray area that we can have, which is great we can we can set the criteria for what we want meant to be. That's definitely been something that's made it more adaptable for us.
Eric Schmokel 20:05
I feel like you guys took some some good advantage of some of the automation with facility fees, I think especially things that used to be very manual for you to have to select that being something that can be automated. Now, obviously, using criteria three one was was very important for them. So just trying to streamline and maybe to a lesser extent, the use of the SuperGrid, but really trying to streamline that reservation process. So I know we worked quite a bit on that when we were doing your migration. So it was
Megan Hoffman 20:29
definitely much nicer having facility time blocks instead of question groups. It definitely helped automate things quite a bit.
Zach Malloch 20:37
That's great. All right. If you guys are okay, we'll kind of go back and forth between a couple of questions here just to get a little bit more in depth and how you guys actually run your operation. And then we can go back if there's any other things that come up with goals or challenges that you want to discuss, or, you know, what you use it to help with? But So Jody was asking what they can do you still do with with all your day camps, you still do paper paperwork, or do you do your waivers in RecTrac? Or do you have any other solutions withthat right now?
Megan Hoffman 21:08
We do a lot. We either do for our day camps, either online registration, or the paper registration form. But it has been much smoother. Definitely having the reports that RecTrac provides has made it much more efficient for us.
Zach Malloch 21:25
And did you guys have like, additional, like limited liability waiver types, things that go with those registrations? Can they agree to those online? Or do they print it out? Bring it in? Okay, great. So E-Authorize.
Katrina Hall 21:37
Yep. So we have a waiver for obviously, our programs, we have a waiver for summer camp, and then we have a waiver for our senior softball and yeah, that can all be done online or, or on paper as well.
Zach Malloch 21:47
Awesome. And then Nigel had a question about whether or not you have a local IT departments. Do you have your cert? Is your server actually in house with you? Are you hosted customer with VSI?
Megan Hoffman 22:01
That's a great question. Our server is definitely it's not in our actual building. It's about
Katrina Hall 22:09
about point 1.7 miles to our town hall, which is about a mile away from us.
Megan Hoffman 22:15
So we do have an IT department of one with a third party contracted out.
Zach Malloch 22:24
So you're all in house, your seniors types? Yeah. So you guys are hosting your own database. And another thing that maybe the IT guy is the only one that gets to work on the server, but because you get access to WebTrac through RecTrac. That's how you get some control over your splash page.
Megan Hoffman 22:41
Yes, absolutely.
Katrina Hall 22:41
Which is fantastic for us.
Eric Schmokel 22:45
I actually think it set you guys up, you guys have the direct access to be able to put your own images and all that kind of stuff on WebTrac. So they were nice enough to give them control over essentially over the web server for them in house, which was great.
Megan Hoffman 22:58
That was huge for us to having that was able we could do flyers now online post pictures, everything is much more efficient, and quicker. And we're not having to be at somebody else's schedule.
Unknown Speaker 23:11
Yeah, I think though, the the struggle there, though, on the flip side is that we are such a big town that we do have to wait sometimes. So we have to wait for the IT department to get to us. So we've really taken the lead on prioritizing when it's a priority. And when we can get around and wait a little bit, you know, but I think we've done Meghan's done a good job at prioritizing and saying that this really needs to be done. And we can wait on X, Y and Z. But I would say that's the challenge with hosting it yourself is you kind of sometimes have to wait, because VSI isn't there just to do it right away for us. So
Zach Malloch 23:43
talking about the updates moving to new builds in the like, correct?
Katrina Hall 23:47
Yep.
Zach Malloch 23:49
And then Laurie is asking the sounds like you guys are doing a lot with the web. They're online registrations for the camps and facilities and like, with activities, do you guys do any of the evaluation stuff for surveys to see how people enjoy the activities?
Megan Hoffman 24:05
We are just starting to get into doing the surveys online right now we do have surveys available at our programs, and they go home and backpacks with our summer camps. But we are looking to utilize RecTrac A little bit more with that the upcoming future.
Zach Malloch 24:20
Awesome. Well, that's good to know. So going back to the question about some of your, your personal challenges, I think that we were going to talk about So Megan, you were were you an IT professional before you got this position. I am a specialist.
Megan Hoffman 24:40
I have a degree in education. I was a history teacher before this position. I've definitely learned a lot I've transitioned into it. I started with the town of Irondequoit actually as a summer camp counselor many years ago and it kind of has grown beyond that over the years. was when I took over as the RecTrac lead user or RecTrac admin for our department. Unfortunately, it was due to someone retiring. So I didn't have the opportunity to learn from them and transition over to them it was, here's this great software that we use, and we probably can do more with it. And good luck figuring it out. So thankfully, RecTrac and Vermont Systems, all of you have been wonderful with helping us transition that and making any maybe troubleshooting phone call that we have, or any case that we open learning opportunity, instead of just doing it for us, which I really liked that. But support team at Vermont Systems does this, instead of just doing something for us, you're able to say, Here, let me show you how to do this. And let me explain to you why it's this way. So instead of just doing it for us, we were able to learn how to problem solve. And I think that's definitely kudos to the support team at Vermont Systems.
Zach Malloch 26:05
And so Laurie has a follow up to that part is wondering if is RecTrac your only responsibility at Irondequoit?
Katrina Hall 26:13
She Wishes!
Megan Hoffman 26:15
it is not. I also oversee the facility reservations, the schedule for our facilities, I write the resolutions for our department for town board.
Katrina Hall 26:29
And she's one of our front office staff.
Megan Hoffman 26:32
And I'm one of two front office registration clerks.
Zach Malloch 26:35
So just a little bit of everything.
Katrina Hall 26:37
We're little, but we do a lot. But moving forward in the new building. The design plan is to have her take more of a back end or role where she sits behind a desk and not at the front desk and does dives even more RecTrac, because we'll have a lot more reports we have to submit for grants and for things like that. So the plan moving forward would be to to take her off of that front desk. But yes, she answers the phone every day. So she's a great multitasker. That's for sure.
Megan Hoffman 27:03
and that's definitely one of the kudos for anybody that's looking to migrate to 3.1 being able to multitask in it and not have to close out if you're putting in an activity, not have to close out and then go into global sales. And that was huge for us.
Zach Malloch 27:17
Absolutely. Very nice. So then, Emily Stevens is going back to your your day camp sort of stuff. And she was wondering if you track health history for your campers, and if so how you do that?
Megan Hoffman 27:32
Right now we have our health history set up as questions that we pull it on our rosters,
Zach Malloch 27:39
putting it right in RecTrac.
Katrina Hall 27:41
Yep, yep. When they just they have to submit it every every season that they sign up for camp, they put they put in the dates.
Zach Malloch 27:47
Okay, great. And then Nigel had another question here asking about when you migrated to 3.1? Did you do so with a completely new database? Or did you migrate from 10.3 bring a lot of data over to that.
Megan Hoffman 28:00
We brought a lot of data over with us. And Eric was wonderful on helping us clean that data up. A little messy. It was very messy.
Eric Schmokel 28:09
Nigel's concern, they're asking about duplicate households and stuff like that. So I know, we spent a lot of time before the migration, obviously running those duplicate reports, doing a lot of household merges, getting all that kind of stuff cleaned up. So obviously, thankfully, for you guys a little bit of a smaller database where it was easier to do that. But obviously, we want to make sure that we're doing that for all the customers who are going to be migrating data. So
Zach Malloch 28:30
now, did you guys do that? I would assume that you'd started in 10.3? Absolutely. So you took the test migration, you saw what those results were and then you you worked on the source of the 10.3 database, that would be the beginning the source of your 3.1 migration. And actually, while we're talking about the migration, there was a little bit like you said, you started a year and a half out, and then you got into the training and everything. And, and you guys actually did a fairly significant amount of phone based training. Yeah, absolutely. Tell us a little bit about that here.
Eric Schmokel 29:00
Yeah, no. So when I was, when I was assigned to the project, and started working with Megan, she was one of those people who I kind of immediately knew was going to be very detail oriented, and very wanting to make sure if you had proper documentation and everything to pass along to all the rest of the users when we started doing that. So. So we were meeting weekly, sometimes, sometimes twice a week, doing these kind of overview trainings and stuff before their migration. So by the time that we actually got on site for the migration with them, there was no surprises, there was no curveballs or anything. It was we were we were kind of expecting it. We're able to get on site and get everything done. And, and I think even during that week, try to tackle some new challenges and implement some new things for them at the same time. We started working on the senior lunch program implementation at that point or something that they were not doing a 10.3. So yeah, they did a great job of preparing obviously, she was kind of speaking to the documentation, quizzes and worksheets and stuff that they did for their staff, which I thought was fancy. Astec. So, definitely great, great resources that they develop there for migration customers.
Zach Malloch 30:06
So I guess the takeaway here is if you guys, if anybody that's watching this needs somebody to come in and help with RecTrac sign a history teacher, take some
Katrina Hall 30:18
Her price is high. How many um, training documents? Did you? 30?30? Yeah, so we had 30 sheets that we would fill out. And they were simple, but it got it forced us to put aside our daily stuff and just get in there for 10 minutes, do a quick transaction and be done. And so if I can give any piece of advice to anybody migrating, I would say do do things like that scheduled times to train in it because the day gets away from you. And if you never go into the Demo, if you if you aren't forced to. So Megan made us all binders, we, you know, we would turn our sheets in just like in a school. And we wrote questions on there. And what was nice about it is we wrote feedback on there. And then she could design the next training based off of what we wanted to know more about what we struggled with in that one. And so it was very individualized, which was nice as well.
Megan Hoffman 31:08
And it was, it definitely allowed us to have some fun in our day to day. So I mean, sometimes it would create a new household using your favorite rock star or a character offering your favorite author, that Type of thing. So we had some funny, funny things come up in our test database. And
Katrina Hall 31:25
I think that was definitely we wouldn't have been as successful if we didn't train for that long. Because we just we do a lot of things. As you see, Megan has a lot of things. So she doesn't get to just focus on one thing. So it really got us focused, just even for like I said, 10 minutes a day.
Megan Hoffman 31:40
I mean, we migrated in August, and I would say probably by June, we were starting to get antsy. Going, let's go now. We're ready now.
Katrina Hall 31:48
Yeah, we'd like
Zach Malloch 31:49
Awh I have to do this in 10.3? Right, very nice. So we had one more question. And we are basically at the end of the time. Are you guys okay with staying around for a couple more minutes? So Emily was asking, Well, are you guys using the Next Gen interface? Now? One, three. Okay, so she was asking, how big Did you feel that learning curve switch was from 3.1 old UI to the 3.1 Next Gen UI.
Megan Hoffman 32:14
It was a little bit of a learning curve. It definitely was a little awkward at first, just because we had trained in three one for so long prior to our migration. Yeah. We definitely though decided when the Next Gen came out to just go for it because we didn't want to get even further into 3.1 and more comfortable with it. So and so far, it's been pretty good.
Katrina Hall 32:36
Yeah, didn't go back and forth. Like we had the option. I think it to go back and forth. And Meghan, I just said, rip the band aid. Because we're going to get confused, we're going to forget what we did over here. And I think that was definitely better at work. You know, luckily, we have a small staff team. At that point in time, our McElroy Park location was closed. So our seasonal concession stand. Members hadn't learned it yet. So there'll be learning it in the next month or so really, more so. And they'll be working in it. So it was easier just to rip that band aid and move forward.
Megan Hoffman 33:06
And so far, we like it.
Katrina Hall 33:07
Yeah, yeah,
Zach Malloch 33:09
we have a little bit of a mirror that Brittany chimed in to just not ask a question, but to say that she switched over the Next Gen. And she didn't feel like it was a very big learning curve. So glad to hear that that's working out for people out there
Megan Hoffman 33:20
definitely is very user friendly.
Zach Malloch 33:22
Okay. And so I wanted to kind of end the conversation, if there are the questions that come up, if we have time, that's great. But it's kind of a Meghan, when we were talking in preparing for this, we talked a little bit about interdepartmental stuff and how you can start to start to feel kind of isolated in your area, using the software doing the things that we do, it's kind of a very specialized Field. I know you had some thoughts about that we had a conversation, I can certainly bring some stuff up. But I wanted to kind of offer that up to you as a topic to bring up.
Megan Hoffman 33:54
I think being in a small department, it was very hard. I'm the Lead admin user, for our software for our department. And I don't have luckily, Katrina is very, very versed in it that I can bounce into her office and say, how do you what do you think about this, but it is nice to be able to share with other departments, other users, what they do, how they problem solve. I know we're looking forward to the user group in March, the New York State user group, so that we can meet with some other local departments and really brainstorm together how they utilize the software. I'm very fortunate that some of the great team at VSI has been lovely and letting me bounce ideas off of them with even just quick emails saying, this is where I'm headed. Am I on the right track? Or am I completely off track? And can you please help me steer me in the right direction? So it's been definitely I think that's one of the more challenging aspects of it is being kind of isolated in that sense.
Zach Malloch 34:55
Well, I'm glad that things like the user groups and you know, talking to can help with that. And in that area of fostering that sort of communication. Are you guys okay with us sharing your emails as part of the response DOCSIS if anybody has other questions and follow ups and wants to collaborate? Yeah. Awesome. Excellent. We have one last question here from Nigel. And he's asking if you use the interface with NCSI, I'm wondering if I mean, SSCI? Eric, are you familiar with that?
Eric Schmokel 35:25
Not that I'm not familiar with the acronym? No, but it might be asking you SSCI, like background check, but
Zach Malloch 35:31
yeah, Nigel. Well, do you guys do any background checks, sort of stuff to use RecTrac for that, and then we'll see if that was what Nigel was actually asking about.
Megan Hoffman 35:39
We do background checks, but we haven't used our database for it. But I do know now, there are definitely fields that you can add into households where maybe the last time you've run a background check. It's a staff member, or a contractor or instructor. So that's definitely something that is great for us to be able to utilize. But we haven't used the interface though.
Katrina Hall 36:00
Yeah, all of our background checks are done through our human resources department. But moving forward, I think it'll be great as we grow larger to keep track of it, but we don't actually do anything other than that at this point.
Zach Malloch 36:12
Okay. Well, thank you so much for for answering that. I think that that does answer Nigel's question, apparently, I didn't know that SSCI has changed their name to NCSI. They're this far away from a procedural fleece television show on the TV. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, I think we are done with questions. As of right now, we will thank you so much for offering to include your emails, we'll include those in response docs so that people can get in touch with you if they have some follow ups. And as always, we'll be posting this. Usually I get these up there by the end of the day, and then we'll get the response stock sometime next week. And I'll be sending out the email when it's ready sometime tomorrow, with all the surveys and everything. And I can't say thank you enough Megan, and Katrina, for joining us.
Megan Hoffman 37:00
Thank you to both of you made it enjoyable.
Zach Malloch 37:03
Very glad to hear that and module. Thank you for joining us today.
Eric Schmokel 37:06
Thank you for having me
Zach Malloch 37:06
offering your insight and expertise.
Eric Schmokel 37:08
Oh, my pleasure.
Zach Malloch 37:09
All right. So we're gonna go ahead and do this multiple Button Press and see if I can get out of this simple way. I can't of course, but here we go. Thank you all for joining us. All of the participants, our special guests, Megan and Katrina from around equate and Eric and we will see you all very soon.
Eric Schmokel 37:27
Bye everyone.
Zach Malloch 37:27
Bye