Guidebook

Guidebook for Orientations/Training: Fantastic!

Commentaires : Overall if you have the budget for this product I would highly recommend it. It's a fantastic tool to use for small, large, or midsized events, and very easy to use on the back end to schedule and upload information, but also very user-friendly for those who will actually be attending and utilizing the app to move and shake with their schedules.

Avantages :

Something that I liked most about this software is the scalability and the ability to update in real time. I cannot tell you how much this saved us during orientation trainings for our student staff when I was a Resident Director. We had instances where rooms were changed at the drop of a hat, or lunches/sessions were altered on start or end times and being able to update their schedule within the Guidebook app saved us and prevented catastrophe of having to let everybody know by word of mouth or e-mail; which none of our student staff would check during orientations. For scheduling snafus like this, it really saved the day with the real time updates and made everything seem seamless and like it was running smoothly, even if on the back end planners were running around like a bunch of crazy chickens. This was really great for CRM integration too which was important to us for tracking/data purposes. With syncing and list creations too, you can really impact things big time. For example, we could use this for student events and track ROI for our programs/budget, and also look at new leads for potential future programs with vendors or groups on campus. The possibilities are all there, and you can really customize this to fit your needs.

Inconvénients :

Pricing was really dicey for us as we had limited budget for large training groups. You have the options for self versus full service to kind of play around with. Unfortunately with budget cuts we weren't able to sustain using this. With the full service you can control branding which is AWESOME though, so if you have need for that it's really something to consider!

Guidebook's mobile app has the tools to help you pull off successful events!

Commentaires : Overall, Guidebook's app functionality has been very helpful to the success of our events. We primarily use their software to provide our audience (high school seniors and their families) with a mobile app that complements the their time at on-campus events. It allows us to digitize many helpful resources, track who attends which sessions, and set capacities for various sessions. Although there's been a bit of staff turnover the past few years, they go above and beyond to make it right.

Avantages :

The backend interface is fairly intuitive. I've been able to train my event staff and interns on how to build robust apps for our events!

Inconvénients :

It feels like it needs a bit of a facelift. It's looked the same for the last 5+ years. It's not bad, but as a weekly "builder" within the platform, I'm ready for a nice look/style.

Not a fan of Guidebook

Avantages :

For what it does, Guidebook is very useful. Great at being that one place on the phone for visitors to click to for information about the events taking place on campus.

Inconvénients :

Customization is really bad. You're forced to use their color palette, which doesn't make sense.

Great and Easy App for Small Businesses

Commentaires : I really enjoyed using Guidebook and will probably use it again. Currently I'm looking at other apps that are less expensive

Avantages :

The app was easy to set up and manage. Even a non-technical person can do it

Inconvénients :

It was quite a bit more expensive than other apps of the type

Worth it for your big conference or big event!

Commentaires : I would definitely use this again! As a first time user there were definitely a few learning curves. But if you're generally tech savvy and have just a general understanding of how apps and things work, you should be completely able to edit and design your own guidebook. And customer service was pretty quick when we needed help if we ever did get stuck (which we did once or twice). Also sidenote: our event was for 200+ people and students.

Avantages :

It is very user friendly! I was placed in charge of building and adding all the information we needed for our event to guidebook, and as a first time user I found it easy to learn. First, you can work on it and then publish it and make it live. So no worries about accidently messing up before the big day. Second, I loved that you could edit the features - you can easily add a map, a list of speakers, sponsors (which was super important!), surveys, etc. While also being able to customize the features to what you needed. For instance we need to add a project checklist - I was even able to upload my own icon to match the customized feature. Finally, I appreciated the schedule tracking feature which allowed conference attendees to see what workshops or events they were attending depending on the team/track they were on. Very useful when trying to corral and herd a large group of people.

Inconvénients :

The survey was difficult to figure out how to use. You have to get out of the guide you're working on and create the survey on your dashboard. From there, you have to ht surveys and polls. Then you can create and edit surveys and attach them to specific events - for instance we had surveys for every workshop, so I was able to attach a survey to each and every workshop we had. BUT the issue came with making sure you attached the survey to the correct event/workshop. Also downloading the data from the survey was super counter intuitive and must be done from the dashboard and NOT the survey area. Its a little confusing in that regard. The guidebook is also hard to edit when its live since some of it can be a bit complicated so I highly recommend trying to double check everything before its published/made live. At least one pro to this is you can test the guide out BEFORE publishing it, which was really nice.