Pingboard

Niche Software, Dynamically Built, Broad Application

Comments: When a new employee joins my company, they are always blown away by one piece of software in particular. It isn't GitHub, SalesForce, Office365, or any of the boilerplate onboarding items. It is Pingboard! When you can see every person in your company on your first day, the reporting structure, the faces, people, and places, it is the singular best resource a new employee can have.

Pros:

Pingboard is easy for end-users and admins alike, integrates with GSuite and auto-syncs, and allows everyone in our org to connect our schedules and statuses. Pingboard support is genuine, quick to reply, and very helpful.

Cons:

Inviting new employees is sometimes accidentally forgotten when a new admin uses the software. Adding a new employee vs generating the invite can be easily mistaken. Timezone issues have confused one or two of our users but Pingboard support quickly resolved this for us.

Well Designed Software; Basic Features

Comments: The Pingboard software is a excellent tool, especially if you utilize it to its full extent. I would add, however, that it is does not provide features that are essentially to our business operations, so it's more of a "nice to have," as opposed to a "must have." If you have the budget for the monthly cost, I would recommend it. If you are looking to trim expenses, I would say it is not vital software at this point.

Pros:

The Pingboard software is very easy to use. We utilize for company communication, so that people are aware when teammate our on vacation, out sick, or on a business trip. The integrations are very helpful as well. Our Out-of-Office calendar links directly to Google Calendar and Slack, which makes communication seamless. Their customer service is exceptional as well, as they always return my requests by the next business day, and are very flexible.

Cons:

Overall, the features are somewhat limited. The Out-of-Office reporting gives you a breakdown the PTO/Sick Days taken, but it would be nice to export into an .xls or .csv file that depicted the actual dates, and not just the number of days taken. We also run into issues with offices in different time zones. The Slack integration does not seem to be sophisticated enough to differentiate the different zones, so there is often confusion as to when people are actually out of office.

Great employee directory tool

Comments: As mentioned above, nothing but a positive experience with this tool. It was very easy to search and use!

Pros:

Really loved the integration with Slack and GCal. Before the pandemic, Pingboard was our go-to place to report OOO and vacation statuses. I loved how it would post to Slack and we could easily see which team members were not in office for the day. Another great thing about Pingboard is the user profiles. In 2020, we experience a high growth phase and new employees were joining almost every week, so having an org chart in Pingboard made it extremely easily to look up a team or even specific employee so you knew who to contact for certain projects.

Cons:

No complaints! It was a great tool that serves us well for 3 or more years!

Needs more feature to stay up to date

Pros:

Easy to read org chart Tracks OOO, WFH, PTO

Cons:

The check in system shows the whole company directory, with photo. Huge security issue here It would be nice if there was some sort of approval process when people submit PTO,WFH etc

Managing Contractors on Projects in Pingboard

Comments: Updates are in real time, so contractors can change their status and I can see it immediately. This helps in team coordination. The organization chart feature is easy to use and modify as changes occur. So it is quick and easy to keep current. I really do like this software.

Pros:

I like that contractors can indicate their current or future status as working remote, on vacation, sick, etc. I can quickly run a report on the status of all contractors on my team or run a report of those out of office.

Cons:

There is no ability to mark a team as a Favorite, so it floats to the top of the team directory. There are several teams I manage in Pingboard and I would like to be able to mark some as Favorites, or have a Favorites option in the Directory.