Making your team schedule online: Design tips from the pros

Professional teams often struggle with keeping cohesion and meeting deadlines. One reason why is the lack of a properly designed team schedule. In this blog, you’ll learn how to create an effective team schedule to get tasks done on time.

Since the post-COVID work environment has mostly gone online, it’s become increasingly difficult to keep track of employees’ milestones. That’s why companies use online team schedules and project management tools like Asana to keep track of workflow. Buying project management software is one thing, but if you don’t have the budget for that, you’ll have to design your team schedule from scratch and manage it online. Here’s how you do that.

Find a reliable schedule maker

You could either make an online schedule maker manually with Google spreadsheets or use an online tool to design it. We recommend the latter. PosterMyWall has an excellent online schedule maker you can use to create one in just a few drag-and-drops. It’s beginner-friendly and super easy to use.

Next, you need to have an idea of what your schedule should look like. What elements should it have? How many rows and columns are required? Do you want it to be stylish or just plain? It’s a good idea to select a pre-built template that suits you on PosterMyWall so that it takes less time.

Decide on the format

Some schedules, like a football match schedule for the week, are different than one required by a sales team in a corporate office. The former needs to be more colorful with bold headlines, a background picture, and an easy-to-read outline of which match is scheduled and when. The latter case would probably be more complex.

Whatever the case, you have to decide the general format of the schedule you’re making. This will greatly depend on what you need it for. For example, a bus schedule posted at a bus stop should definitely be in a spreadsheet format, so it’s easier for people to know which bus arrives when.

On to the styling

A simple spreadsheet looks boring, doesn’t it? Especially if it’s to be posted in a public place and you want people to have a look at it. If grabbing attention is high on your list, you should definitely make your schedule visually attractive. Add a relevant background image. For example, in the case of a bus schedule, you could show a cartoon bus riding along the highway toward a sunset.

Next comes the fonts and colors — they should be consistent. If you’ve italicized one row, all the rows should be italicized and have the same color if they contain the same information. The headline should be bolded and clear to read. We prefer it to be a different, bolder shade of the color you used in the fonts in the table. And lastly, take care of margins — your schedule should look well-aligned from top to bottom with equal margins.

Include all the relevant information

Beneath the schedule, you should mention anything you deem important. For example, on a bus schedule posted at a bus stop, the footer should have the contact number of the public transport authority, the police, or any other emergency department contact number.

If it’s for company employees, it should be on the company’s letterhead with all the elements in it, such as the company name, logo, mailing address, etc. Just make sure all the information is presented succinctly. Avoid writing blocks of text at all costs — they’ll make it unreadable.

Keep your brand identity in mind

If your schedule is for an external audience, make sure it reflects your brand identity. That means all the elements should be consistent with how your customers perceive you. If you’re a luxury perfume brand advertising their discount schedule for various deodorants, the schedule you put out should exude a luxury vibe — it can’t be a simple spreadsheet.

Besides that, you should choose colors that gel well with your brand identity. Most likely, these will be colors you use on your letterhead. The best way to keep your schedule consistent with your brand is to ask yourself, “how do I want customers to perceive my products and brand?” Once you’ve answered that, you’ll know exactly what to do.

Final thoughts

Designing an online team schedule has no right or wrong answers. It’s very subjective and depends on what you want to achieve out of the schedule. Everything else depends on the answer to that question.

The above design tips are just to give you a framework and direction so that you know what things to keep in mind when crafting an online team schedule. Lastly, make sure the schedule is tailored to your intended audience so that they find it easy to use or navigate through it to find the relevant information.