Greetings to all -
  I'm new to this list, so please forgive me if this has been discussed
recently.  I'm in charge of scheduling interpretive staff (a potter, a
log kitchen cook, a printer, a Mexican American docent, and six staff
docents) plus about a hundred volunteer docents.  Currently, I'm using a
database (MicroSoft's ACCESS) to generate the schedules for the
volunteer docents, who work on a fixed monthly schedule (such as: first
Wednesday and second Thursday of each month), and then making separate
calendars using MSWord for the interpretive staff.
  I know that there are several different kinds of scheduling software
out there; a friend who works in computers has suggested MSProject and
PeopleSoft. The main concern that I have is being able to keep track of
the different schedules for paid staff and volunteers, and hopefully
tracking hours for all of them as well.  Can anyone offer suggestions on
this?  Are there any specialized programs out there for non-profit
scheduling like this?  Working with the various combinations of database
and word-processing becomes a bubble-gum - and - rubber-band sort of
situation; it works, but it's very cumbersome and has a lot of manual
entry work that it seems ought to be better done by computer.

Thanks in advance for your help -
--
Michael Cook
Education Coordinator
Old City Park