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  • 1.  Any way to get some stability in shifts through the week for individual agents when using forecast-based schedules?

    Posted 11-22-2017 09:18

    Hi there,

     

    We are starting to use the WFM tools in Purecloud and one of the issues I am having trouble getting around is the fact that while the shifts being selected per day make sense looking at the forecasts, they don't seem to take into account stability for agents.

     

    To be a bit more clear, I have agents with a shift at 8AM on a Monday, then finishing at midnight on Tuesday and back to an early shift on Wednesday. All of this while some other agent is having the opposite assignment (midnight on Monday and Wednesday, early shift on Tuesday).

     

    Is there an option to make the tool take this into account? As this schedules would need to be manually modified which would take away some of the usefulness of the tool.

     

    Thanks in advance,

    David



  • 2.  RE: Any way to get some stability in shifts through the week for individual agents when using forecast-based schedules?

    Posted 11-22-2017 15:34

    To add to this, I've used the "Minimum amount of time between shifts" to evade agents getting shifts too close to their previous one but it still doesn't provide any stability for no apparent reason at all.

     

    Someone doing Monday to Wednesday 8AM, having Thursday as day off then coming back on Friday to a midnight shift, again, when someone else is scheduled the opposite way (Midnight on Monday until Wednesday, then Thursday off and Friday on a 8AM shift).

     

    Is there a way to prevent this from happening that is not manually adjusting the schedule?

     

    Thanks,

    David



  • 3.  RE: Any way to get some stability in shifts through the week for individual agents when using forecast-based schedules?

    GENESYS
    Posted 11-28-2017 23:05

    Hi David,

     

    The shifts can be as locked down or as flexible as you configure them to be. If the shifts across the days have a wide start time, there is nothing to constrain the scheduling engine in picking any valid start time within those windows across the days (as long as they do not violate other constraints such as the minimum time between shifts). The scheduling engine is free to schedule exactly one shift among the choices per day. E.g., choose an early shift / start time on Monday and a late shift / start time on Wednesday.

     

    We do plan on releasing a 'Maximum shift start time variance' work plan constraint. This will attempt to constrain the start times, if there are common ones, across shifts / days.

     

    Until then you could narrow down the shift start window to some acceptable tolerance and if it still is not constrained enough, then utilize fixed shift start times with some manual re-assignment/constraint change on 1-week, 2-week, etc. rotation.

     

    Typically users will setup several work plans (e.g., morning, morning flex, second shift, evenings, etc.). Having one work plan with wide open shift start time possibilities is not very common. Could it be that you have distinct types of shifts that could be better segmented in their own work plans? E.g., instead of having one work plan with three shifts: shift 1 with a start window of 8am-12pm, a shift 2 with a start window of 12pm-4pm, and a shift 3 with a start time of 4pm-12am (next day) - have three work plans (i.e., first shift, second shift, third shift) with one shift each.



  • 4.  RE: Any way to get some stability in shifts through the week for individual agents when using forecast-based schedules?

    Posted 11-29-2017 14:56

    Hi, Jay

     

    I have been using the minimum hours between shift as a way of constraining the variance and it works quite well but since we are open 7 days a week and our employees work 5 of them, this restriction is unreliable when they are coming of an off day.

     

    I do look forward to the release of that constraint since it is exactly what I am looking for. Is there any ETA on this?

     

    I came to the same conclusion of establishing multiple work plans and manually create an agent rotation to them but doing requires a pre-study of the forecast in order to distribute the agents accordingly, which takes away a chunk of it's usefulness.

     

    In any case, thanks for your response, I will be following your advice.



  • 5.  RE: Any way to get some stability in shifts through the week for individual agents when using forecast-based schedules?

    GENESYS
    Posted 12-20-2017 14:05

    We released a maximum shift start time variance constraint this morning. The Resource Center has been updated with new and updated content regarding work plans and shifts:

    • https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/set-up-the-work-plans-weekly-configuration/ - has information on the recently released maximum shift start time variance including a link to a specific article on that feature https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/maximum-shift-start-time-variance/
    • https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/about-work-plans/ - has one example about break and meal rules for variable length shifts and another example that shows how the scheduling engine will choose amongst shifts within a given work plan


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