Guidebook

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Guidebook is a pretty easy tool to use when coordinating, planning, and scheduling events such as conferences and organizational/ company days. I have used in education when planning PD days for our district or when attending conferences. best part is the mobile app that users get to use and interact with when you make it live. Decent amount of included capabilities as well, that are in the free program, including images, and a feedback system.

When using with the free program, you are limited to the total number of downloads of your mobile app. I assume when paying this will change. As of now, the free version has sufficed.