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  • 1.  Breaks for Multiple Agents in Same Work Plan

    Posted 06-27-2025 14:56

    If I have multiple agents in one work plan, is there any way to ensure they each have a different break time? 

    I have selected a break start time relative to shift start, and a flexible start time.  If there are, say, 5 agents in a work plan, perhaps 3 of them will have the same break or lunch at the same time, and I will need to manually adjust them.  but the other 2 will have varying breaks.  

    How can I ensure the agents don't share the same break time, other than giving them their own individual work plan?

    Appreciate any help!


    #Workforce Management

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    Amanda Ellis
    Real-Time WFM Analyst
    Scandinavian Tobacco Group/Cigars International
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  • 2.  RE: Breaks for Multiple Agents in Same Work Plan

    Posted 06-30-2025 12:23

    Hi Amanda, 

    The short answer is not really. When evaluating the best shift to use from the Work Plan, the schedule engine is trying to optimise for the whole Business Unit, so it might choose the same shift for all of the employees on that Work Plan.

    To help minimise the "stacking" of breaks and lunches, you can use the different Activity Smoothing methods during the schedule generation process. you can read more about this in the following articles:

    https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-business-unit/ 

    https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/generate-a-schedule-from-a-forecast/

    The 3 methods are:

    • Reduce concurrent activities across the Business Unit (Recommended). Select this option, enabled by default when you create a business unit, to ensure that the schedules of agents in the same business unit are updated to minimize the number of concurrent activities. For example, lunch breaks for all agents in the business unit have to be scheduled from 12:00 pm. to 1:00 p.m. The lunch breaks are distributed in a way that best supports the business unit service predictions. This can result in some management units seeing specific times within the flexibility period configured in the work plan having more concurrent activities.
    • Reduce concurrent activities within the Management Unit. Select this option to ensure that the schedules in the same management unit are updated to minimize the number of concurrent activities. For example, break time of agents in the management unit are distributed in such a way that all agents do not get to take their breaks at the same time.
    • Schedule activities to offer the most consistent service goal prediction across the whole schedule. Select this option to ensure that the service levels are consistently maintained and result in more concurrent activities for agents. For example, breaks are distributed in a way that provides the most consistent service predictions. The supervisor assigns breaks in the same time, rather than distributing the activities evenly across the flexibility period.

    Paul



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    Paul Wood
    Product Manager for Genesys Cloud Workforce Management
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Breaks for Multiple Agents in Same Work Plan

    Posted 07-01-2025 14:56

    Hi Amanda, Paul provided a lot of great information in his response, but I also wanted to offer some things that you might check in your work plan.    When setting up the workplan flex breaks and meals, you will want to ensure that the flexed time is long enough to spread the agent breaks out. Also, you will want to make sure for breaks that the increment setting is set to 15 minutes.   The workplan settings default to 30-minute increments and this will limit the number of variations that Genesys can schedule. 

    For example:  If you have 3 agents working 8am-4:30pm, and you want the breaks to start at 10am.  You will want to make sure that the earliest start time is 2 hours into the shift, and the latest start time is 2.5 hours into the shift, the increment set to 15 minutes.  This will give Genesys 3 slots to schedule that first break and the likely hood that it will stack them will be less.



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    Russell Donald
    InflowCX
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Breaks for Multiple Agents in Same Work Plan

    Posted 07-01-2025 20:46

    Good points Russell. Sometimes it looks like, when configuring a work plan, that there are more possible activity start times than there actually are due to other constraints (e.g., min/max contiguous time), other activity windows, etc.

    Two other things I would mention:
    1. If two agents with different capabilities handling different planning groups get scheduled for a break at the same time, does not mean that decision is less optimal.
    2. A choice of an early break time is not done in isolation, it is a set of decisions and an earlier break start time may be chosen because another activity's or activities' start time(s) dictate that based on predicted service performance and service performance objectives.



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    Jay Langsford
    VP, R&D
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    Original Message


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