Stupid Guest Tricks

Big Wallaby wrote:In my experience, CDS was up for clock-in, and after that it is a wild card. At least, that was a week ago. Anything changed on that front?

I think they should roll back CDS to the one that worked, get the bugs out on this new one, then (and only then) try it again.

It's been imitating a yo-yo the past few days, up and down, up and down. In the Magic Kingdom Photopass and Front Entrance merchandise have stopped using it completely, they wall-clock and the coordinators do everything the old fashioned way.

Hopefully it'll be fully functional again soon. It working sometimes and not working sometimes is getting old for me and I know the coordinators and managers have to hate it even more.

The CDS crash has affected Everest for the past few days. If anything, CDS has been sporadically working. For instance, I was able to clock-in on CDS this morning in addition to picking up my first position at opening. CDS even pushed through the first rotataion successfully. After that, it crashed and we were on manual rotations the for the rest of the day. Luckily, the coordinator was able to print off the activity queue and play the part of CDS from the break room using a grease board and manually generated slips. All CMs from this point on had to use the wall clock. When CDS crashed the other day at EE, we resorted to one long rotation, where one would take their break at the end of the rotation, yet we were able to print the activity queue.

The new CDS is an interesting program. The funniest thing it has done for us at EE was generating Jungle Cruise rotations! This happened several times the second day the system was online.

Finally, I have a problem with using a combination of CDS and wall clocks in one shift. In the past, I have had pay discrepancies due to this. Hopefully everything will work out alright.

steverails wrote:The new CDS is an interesting program. The funniest thing it has done for us at EE was generating Jungle Cruise rotations! This happened several times the second day the system was online.

I heard about that! On my way out today I bumped into HarryfromMarydelDE on his way in and we got to talking about CDS. He told me he heard about somewhere in DAK was getting Jungle Cruise rotations.

Be sure to check WorkBrain and your pay stubs to make sure they show the right things.

steverails wrote:Finally, I have a problem with using a combination of CDS and wall clocks in one shift. In the past, I have had pay discrepancies due to this. Hopefully everything will work out alright.

If my understanding of TWDC time functions is correct, there's a very easy way to correct this.

One of the conveniences of CDS is that it uploads all the clocks to Payroll at the end of the night. This doesn't happen with Wall Clocks - your Lead/Coordinator/Manager has to pay you at the end of the night.

Just remember to check each day's shift on Workbrain, and if it doesn't have a 'Y' at the end of each row on the Timesheet, go to your managers so they can change it.

I agree with the weirdness of CDS. I clocked in one day for EMH at 7:45 am and it gave me rotation. The first rotation doesn't typically go out until about 8:40 on EMH mornings. Also there was one EMH evening where it was sending out rotations every 20 minutes. So we literally got rotated 4 times in one hour. The main problem we were having was that if breaks weren't picked up within 10 minutes of their scheduled times CDS would delete the break and give out tasks instead. It was very irritating.

Sounds like they are using the programmers at my wife's company to do the work, and then they probably blame the QA department when stuff breaks. You can't find all the bugs on bad code!

Me, I blame Microsoft.

ktulu wrote:Sounds like they are using the programmers at my wife's company to do the work, and then they probably blame the QA department when stuff breaks. You can't find all the bugs on bad code!

Me, I blame Microsoft.

It's easy to blame Microsoft, and in most cases I'll agree with you.

Let's put the blame where it really should belong, with the programmers.

Programmers these days would not know tight, small, efficient, bug free code if it came up to them and introduced itself.

Cranbiz wrote: Let's put the blame where it really should belong, with the programmers.

Especially programmers that choose to implement a solution in a language that's really not good for what they're trying to do. CDS runs entirely on Java and ActiveX. I personally tend to think it would probably be better implemented as a PHP frontend, talking to an SQL backend. Easier to achieve the functions, and most likely reduced processing power necessary to run it.

(granted, intelligent system design and usability have apparently been ignored by WDW IT ... the HUB is written entirely in ColdFusion, and is one of the least usable websites I've ever had to use)

hhsrat wrote:Especially programmers that choose to implement a solution in a language that's really not good for what they're trying to do. CDS runs entirely on Java and ActiveX. I personally tend to think it would probably be better implemented as a PHP frontend, talking to an SQL backend. Easier to achieve the functions, and most likely reduced processing power necessary to run it.

I can see it now, employee figures out how to use a php injection attack to remove points, add hours and other shenanigans!

ktulu wrote:I can see it now, employee figures out how to use a php injection attack to remove points, add hours and other shenanigans!

Hmm, I'm sure NOBODY thought of that!! (hehehehe)

After reading all the trials and tribulations that you CM's are going through, just to get to the job, I really appreciate being a salaried employee, not having to worry about a time clock! (just worry about a stupid page!)