Dispatch Dispatcher
Situational Awareness; Time Pressure; Workload
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Company Policy; Staffing; Human Factors; Environment - Non Weather Related
This morning I had XX aircraft on my desk and all of a sudden the ATC strips were not filing.  I had to then manually file all my flight strips which is a lengthy process with so many aircraft and immediately I was task saturated.  I was able to get a few flights to depart but after I had to call in a ZZZ1 flight; I lost the ability to flight follow since that process takes a longer time than manually filing strips over the internet.The issue we have is everyone was affected and I couldn't ask another Dispatcher for help since they were also having issues and didn't have the free time to look after additional flights along with thunderstorms all over.Having IT issues is nothing new and we need to have faster resolutions and our workload is so high we can easily get over our head in an instant. We need more dispatchers for this shift and we have many dispatchers on furlough that could come in and work and it would help to have someone from IT inside for help.The big issue is our company cares more for the bottom line than for the safety of the thousands of passengers we fly.  I'm very fearful we will have some major incident soon.
Dispatcher reported being overwhelmed with aircraft due to staffing shortages and computer system difficulties.