Genesys Cloud - Main

Just wanted to see how other's are creating their Holiday closures in Scheduling.  Looks like there are many ways to do this and I'm working to create an effective way to close multiple queues during Holidays.
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Jean Lam
Bridgecrest Acceptance Corporation
------------------------------

Hi Jean,

We set our holidays at the beginning of the year. We make sure that each individual holiday DAY has it's own schedule. For example for some of our call centers, we want the holiday closure msg played for three days for Christmas, other call centers we want the msg played for four days over Christmas. For Christmas there were be 4 schedules; one for the 24th, 25th, 26th and then then the odd one being the 23rd. Then we will update the schedule group to have the appropriate holiday schedule based on what is needed for them. It is hard to put into words, so below are a couple of screenshots: one of our schedules, and one of our schedule groups. Hope this helps.

Thank you for sharing Jackie! We have a similar set up but I find it difficult to keep track what Holiday schedules are being used by a queue and vice versa.  The way Genesys displays the Holiday schedule groups is quite hard to read if you're scanning for a specific schedule.  I use the browser search function and it helps a bit.

What if by accident you cross use the incorrect Holiday schedule from one queue to another queue that does not have the same Holiday hours?  It would be a nice feature to have a "pop up" window to show hours and days when hovering these schedule links.

------------------------------
Jean Lam
Bridgecrest Acceptance Corporation
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 12-27-2021 10:57
From: Jackie Maher
Subject: How do you plan and organize your Holiday closures using Schedule groups and schedules?

Hi Jean,

We set our holidays at the beginning of the year. We make sure that each individual holiday DAY has it's own schedule. For example for some of our call centers, we want the holiday closure msg played for three days for Christmas, other call centers we want the msg played for four days over Christmas. For Christmas there were be 4 schedules; one for the 24th, 25th, 26th and then then the odd one being the 23rd. Then we will update the schedule group to have the appropriate holiday schedule based on what is needed for them. It is hard to put into words, so below are a couple of screenshots: one of our schedules, and one of our schedule groups. Hope this helps.





------------------------------
[Jackie] [Maher]
[Further]

Original Message:
Sent: 12-21-2021 13:41
From: Jean Lam
Subject: How do you plan and organize your Holiday closures using Schedule groups and schedules?

Just wanted to see how other's are creating their Holiday closures in Scheduling.  Looks like there are many ways to do this and I'm working to create an effective way to close multiple queues during Holidays.
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Jean Lam
Bridgecrest Acceptance Corporation
------------------------------

Yes, the way Genesys has their holiday schedules listed in schedule groups hard to track. It would be very helpful to have filtering and sorting so it was easy to compare and search for schedules. It would also be good to have a pop up as you noted or allow for a hover feature to show the dates. The Genesys Ideal Lab has some recommendations you could vote for in this area, if you have not already. Here is a link to get you to a list of them... https://genesyscloud.ideas.aha.io/ideas/search?query=schedule+sort

It is good to know that we are both levering the set-up in the same way. :)

I almost always do schedule checking in Architect using Evaluate schedule groups.  Lately I've started doing this as a 2 step process, First I create a schedule group or groups witch a 24X7 open schedule and then all the appropriate Holidays added.  Then I create a schedule group or groups with my open/closed business hours.  In architect, I first check my Holiday group, if it's not a holiday, I do another evaluate schedule group to check for open or closed.  I've found this gives me a nice amount of flexibility without having to jump through the hoop of adding all my holidays to all my schedule groups.

------------------------------
Michael Steinke
Inflow Communications
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 12-21-2021 13:41
From: Jean Lam
Subject: How do you plan and organize your Holiday closures using Schedule groups and schedules?

Just wanted to see how other's are creating their Holiday closures in Scheduling.  Looks like there are many ways to do this and I'm working to create an effective way to close multiple queues during Holidays.
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Jean Lam
Bridgecrest Acceptance Corporation
------------------------------

Hi Michael,

I like how you manage that. Do all your contact centers observe the same holidays or do you have different contact center with different holidays? If the latter, do you have multiple schedule groups open 24 x 7 with the appropriate holidays for each? 

Thank you,
Jackie

Hi Jackie,

I work for a reseller, so I end up getting to do all kinds of schedule stuff for all kinds of call centers.

As a general practice, I try to use conditional rules to makes "set it and forget it" holiday schedule.  For example, for a US company that is open Monday through Friday, I will handle Independence day by creating 3 holiday schedules.  My first will have them closed on July 4 if that day is weekday.  My second rule will have them closed on July 3rd if it is a Friday (meaning the 4th is Saturday).  My third rule will have them close on July 5th if it is a Monday (meaning the 4th was Sunday).  This works great (and I use the iCal thing in the upper right corner along with a spreadsheet I built so I can make all my holidays with copy-paste) but it does end up with a lot of holidays.  For any company that has more than 1 schedule of business hours, it gets tedious having to add all those holidays to all the different schedule groups.

A recent customer has 5 different sets of business hours, but everybody get the same holidays, which is what led to my idea of creating a separate Holiday Schedule group that I can evaluate first, then do a second schedule group lookup on non-holidays to apply my business hours.

I ended up with these schedule groups:

In Architect my nest schedule group checks look like this:


BTW, the reason for the 24X7 open schedule in my holiday schedule group is that you can't save a schedule group if it doesn't contain at least one open schedule.

Thanks,
Mike

------------------------------
Michael Steinke
Inflow Communications
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 12-29-2021 10:55
From: Jackie Maher
Subject: How do you plan and organize your Holiday closures using Schedule groups and schedules?

Hi Michael,

I like how you manage that. Do all your contact centers observe the same holidays or do you have different contact center with different holidays? If the latter, do you have multiple schedule groups open 24 x 7 with the appropriate holidays for each?

Thank you,
Jackie

------------------------------
Jackie Maher
Further

Original Message:
Sent: 12-28-2021 17:00
From: Michael Steinke
Subject: How do you plan and organize your Holiday closures using Schedule groups and schedules?

I almost always do schedule checking in Architect using Evaluate schedule groups.  Lately I've started doing this as a 2 step process, First I create a schedule group or groups witch a 24X7 open schedule and then all the appropriate Holidays added.  Then I create a schedule group or groups with my open/closed business hours.  In architect, I first check my Holiday group, if it's not a holiday, I do another evaluate schedule group to check for open or closed.  I've found this gives me a nice amount of flexibility without having to jump through the hoop of adding all my holidays to all my schedule groups.

------------------------------
Michael Steinke
Inflow Communications

Original Message:
Sent: 12-21-2021 13:41
From: Jean Lam
Subject: How do you plan and organize your Holiday closures using Schedule groups and schedules?

Just wanted to see how other's are creating their Holiday closures in Scheduling.  Looks like there are many ways to do this and I'm working to create an effective way to close multiple queues during Holidays.
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Jean Lam
Bridgecrest Acceptance Corporation
------------------------------

Hi Michael,

Very interesting. Thank you for the great details on this. What you are doing makes sense to me if you have contact centers that have different open schedules but the same holidays. I have one contact center but for some specific customers they are also open on the weekend. The incoming DNIS determines this if call can go through to a CSR on weekends. They also have different holidays, I think the best I can do is what is already being done for our situation. 

If I ever move to a different gig, I will remember the holiday set-up you shared. It would come in handle as an alternative.

This Genesys Community is great. It challenges me and helps me become smarter. Thank you Michael for helping me see/learn different ways to slice pie. :)

Jackie