Welcome to the first edition of THIS WEEK AT VSBL. I'm Scott Huffman, VSBL's Product 'Deputy'. I'm excited to start this weekly blog so you can get a closer look at our world. First, why are we doing this blog? Here's my take on that question:
Many of us here at VSBL love video games, specifically Destiny 2. In the early days of VSBL I would design the app while Alex (Lead Developer) would build it - all day, every day. Then we'd run some raids in Destiny 2 at night. As players of their game, we loved that the developers behind Destiny 2, Bungie, wrote a weekly blog post to keep the community up-to-date on what they were working on. And so, we want to provide that same level of transparency.
TL;DR Every Monday we'll release a blog talking about what we did the week before.
We figure it'd be a good opportunity for our community to gain some 'visibility' into our own people and operations. Let's get to it!
*Shift Leaders & Setups will be removed from the Menu with Shifts. You MUST set up Shifts to access Setups on release day.
VSBL was ideated from within the restaurant & developed from our homes. It's been a few years working from home... and that can take a toll (source: my own personal experience). Pair that with growing our team to support you better - it was time for us to find a place we can call home. We've landed in a really cool building here in Dallas, TX and it's been incredible. Being in person has allowed us those moments we've missed from our days in the restaurant: Giving a co-worker a quick high-five, gathering around the whiteboard, snatching a bite to eat together... it's no secret having community around you is important. This office has given us something we've been missing, and I can't wait for our community to see the benefits of that in our product within the coming weeks.
The office building has a deli with phenomenal food - and it reminds us daily of the people we serve. Blanca, Marta, Javier and Laura always smile and welcome us when we come get a bite to eat. In fact, the other day they made us turkey sandwiches even though they were closed. Interactions like this remind us of the thousands of team members across the country, always sharing a smile and going the extra mile. That's our people. Our mission is to make their lives easier and less stressful. And it's so worth it.
In a future edition of THIS WEEK AT VSBL, we'll take you on a tour of the office... once it's pretty.
While we've been working overtime to get Shifts out for y'all, we recognize it's taken longer than we expected. As a thank you for being patient with us, we're releasing a few enhancements early.
I'm soooooo excited to get this one out to y'all. You've asked us to add images to Broadcasts, and I'm happy to say it's on the way. Here's what it'll look like in the Team Feed. Fun fact - you can find me in that picture in the middle jumping. In 2016 we used that photo for a free-meals-for-a-year giveaway, and it blew up to something like 25,000 likes. Fun times!
You'll be able to add up to 3 images on each broadcast - allowing for better communication with your team. Adding the images is simple and works similarly to Tasks or Checklists.
Now you can add a link to the broadcast, instead of putting it in the message itself. You can also add a title for the link, so your team knows exactly what the link is for.
Currently, you can only send Broadcasts to your team based on their Role. Moving forward, you'll not only be able to send to specific Roles, but also Areas. Say you'd like to send a Broadcast to your Front of House team... great, just choose Front of House. Maybe just your Back of House Leaders? Sweet, tap on Director, Shift Leader, and Team Lead with Back of House. Now only those 3 Roles in Back of House will receive the Broadcast.
This sets a new path for Broadcasts going forward, and allows for us to expand on the functionality in the future. Keep those recommendations coming!
We're adding a new report to show top accountability for your people. This report will show you how many Accountability Points employees have received within your filtered date range. We're hopeful this will provide more VSBL-TY (get it? 👀) into your people. When you tap the tile, it'll show everyone in your filtered report, and when you tap on an employee, it'll take you to their Accountability Story -- the same one found within their Profile.
Honestly, we should've done this from the start... but here we are. Here soon you'll be able to set your own 4-Digit PINs. Once released, you can change your PIN in your profile settings. Leaders, you can also set PINs for your team members through Admin > Roles & Users. We're rolling this out before Shifts because tablets are getting a loooooooooooottttttt more functionality.
We heard you - constantly getting the full-screen update prompt was a tad bit annoying, so we've re-evaluated how you'll be prompted to update. In most cases, you'll see this new update banner at the top of your Home screen. You can tap the 'X' to close it out, and VSBL will remind you next time you launch the app.
However in some cases where an update is required because the changes are substantial, we'll still prompt you with the full-screen version.
Sometimes we'll send you a special message with this new announcement banner. To be honest, I'm not sure how we'll use this one... so I asked our community team to give some examples (they're super excited!) Here's some examples from the community team:
-Tips & Tricks
-Goodies for you
-Celebrating special days with you (Christmas is coming up!)
Now I'll kick it over to Lesley, our Community Director to give an update on the Community Team.
Join our VSBL Community Facebook group to participate in our 21 Days of Fun, which includes giveaways, new resources, enhancements (as seen above) and more, all leading up to the release of Shifts.
Erin joined our team the last few weeks, but has been a VSBL customer for the past five months at Chick-fil-A Braker Lane in Austin, TX. She expressed interest a few times and we almost missed out on her! Fortunately her tenacity won the day, and after working with her for a short period of time now, I can say she's bringing a HUGE amount of value to our Community. She played many leadership roles in her 10 years of Chick-fil-A (as well as a stint at Freebirds), but her experience also extends not only in Freestanding Units, but she can consult Mall teams as well during her 2 years as a Mall GM. We're honored and privileged to have her. Thanks for going to battle with us, Erin!
Change can be tough. So with Shifts, we're putting extra effort into making the transition away from Shift Leaders feature and Setups feature as easy as possible. You (or someone in your store) will receive a call from the VSBL team over the next few weeks so we can come alongside you in this transition to Shifts.
Join a Shifts webinar to get help configuring your new Shifts feature! We're doing them every day for the next three weeks to ensure you have the help you need :)
Hey everyone, my name is Alex and I’m the CTO and lead architect of VSBL! I wanted to start off our first THIS WEEK AT VSBL chatting about what the purpose of this is and some of the reasons we wanted to write it for you.
Firstly, at VSBL we believe transparency is key to success in any area and so we wanted to provide a deeper look into our development process and progress updates on up and coming features, bug fixes, enhancements, etc. Development can be a crazy world and we want to bring you along for the ride.
For context, the VSBL mobile app is approaching 300,000 lines of code and that’s not including our other custom tools, website, or portals. Let’s just say our development team’s hands have gotten lots of exercise over the years
Now that we’ve gotten introductions out of the way, let’s get started.
One of our most requested features since VSBL’s launch in late 2022 has been the ability to build Setups on tablet and the web. We are happy to finally deliver that experience with our new Shifts feature. Here’s the progress we’ve had on that so far.
This week, after some diligent work from our devs, the setup builder is finally complete. It, by far, has been the most complicated feature we’ve ever built. The tablet screen alone is close to 30,000 lines of code long and accounts for everything from multi-shift, infractions, gaps in position placements, groups for positions, and a lot more.
Danh, one of our full stack developers, headed up this project and we’re very pleased with what he delivered. Great job Danh.
A funny story about broadcasts. Originally, we developed broadcasts off a random comment from Jason, our CEO, in about 1 hour. That version of broadcasts is still the foundation of the feature today.
All that being said, broadcasts needed some time, love, and care from both the product and development teams.
The enhancement is coming soon and it'll include a new interface, for broadcast creation, more customization around who receives them, the ability to attach links, and yes, pictures. . . all the pictures.
Password resets and user invites have been a major pain point since launch and needed some work to improve the experience and reliability. This week, the decision was made to shift some resources to improving this process.
Originally, our reset and invites were handled by an external service, however, we have officially brought that internal. We now host the reset page and invite pages through our portal and reset link durations have been increased from 1 hour to 48 hours.
We hope to continue expanding this functionality and improving reliability and believe this is a great stride forward.
I hope you all have enjoyed this first developer update. Myself and the technical team look forward to hearing your feedback and walking alongside us through the development journey. - Alex
This blog was a blast to write. Thank you for supporting VSBL and the vision we have. We couldn't do this without each and every one of you, and man, it's the honor of a lifetime. - Scott & The VSBL Team