Hi all,

Wondering if there is a way of having integrated schedules, whereby changes made to one schedule automatically update the other?

To elaborate, in our business, we have a contact centre and a public facing centre, both in different areas of the building. We have hybrid workers that work across both units. WFM controls the rosters for both units.

In the past we had the two business units separated with one schedule for the call centre staff and then the other for the Front of House staff. The issue with that set up was that managers and WFM were consistently having to switch between them in cases of absences and organising cover/leave. So recently, WFM combined all staff on the one schedule. This has resulted in it being more painful, as when viewing the schedule, there are break times that belong to an agent at Front of House that do not affect the call centre staffing levels and vice versa - too much "noise". 

We would like to go back to having 2 separate schedules.

But the question is, if a call centre agent is updated to work part of their shift at Front of House and changes are made to reflect this on the call centre schedule, can this automatically update the Front of House schedule - reducing the need to double handle?

I.e, a hybrid agent is rostered for 8.30am to 5pm in call centre. One of the Front of house agents is finishing early at 12pm. The Front of House Team Leader requests afternoon cover so the Contact Centre send the hybrid agent to Front of House from 12pm to 5pm. WFM updates the hybrids schedule in the call centre roster using an activity code of "FOH" from 12pm to 5pm. 

Ideally, when the change is made, then the FOH roster is updated automatically so that the Team Leader at Front of House can see "Oh, XX is coming over at 12pm"

Thoughts?

Regards

Adam Strang

Thanks for your post.  Business Units in WFM are completely separate.   To forecast, schedule, and track for shared service goals and generate shifts that are optimized to meet the workload and goals of all of the shared (and separate) work, then implementing in one Business Unit can accomplish that.  If you want everything to be separate and the other staff, work and workers to be 'in another universe' from each other, then implementing in separate Business Units can accomplish that. 

Another way to think about it is how much time out of a week or month is work shared?  If the front and back-office staff share load as a standard practice- aka it occurs normally, and you make staffing decisions based on this... as opposed to the staff backing each other up only during an emergency.  Another way to think about it could be how much volume is shared vs separate.

When implemented in one Business Unit, providing a holistic view of all work and workers, for ease of use you can subdivide agents by Management Unit, and Work Team, and additional agent groupings.  You can limit the agents a user is allowed to manage using Divisions and various permission conditions (such as the permission conditions on the Schedule Editor permissions which can limit the agents a particular user can view and manage in Schedule Editor).  Modules have a variety of filters to give the user tools to narrow down to the part of the business they want to work with.  Schedule Editor has multiple options here:  Agent visibility via work team or management unit filter, and multiple additional agent filters in the Filter and Sort dialog, accompanied by Work visibility controlled by Planning Group filters for the performance and service goal prediction information.   

Hi all,

Wondering if there is a way of having integrated schedules, whereby changes made to one schedule automatically update the other?

To elaborate, in our business, we have a contact centre and a public facing centre, both in different areas of the building. We have hybrid workers that work across both units. WFM controls the rosters for both units.

In the past we had the two business units separated with one schedule for the call centre staff and then the other for the Front of House staff. The issue with that set up was that managers and WFM were consistently having to switch between them in cases of absences and organising cover/leave. So recently, WFM combined all staff on the one schedule. This has resulted in it being more painful, as when viewing the schedule, there are break times that belong to an agent at Front of House that do not affect the call centre staffing levels and vice versa - too much "noise". 

We would like to go back to having 2 separate schedules.

But the question is, if a call centre agent is updated to work part of their shift at Front of House and changes are made to reflect this on the call centre schedule, can this automatically update the Front of House schedule - reducing the need to double handle?

I.e, a hybrid agent is rostered for 8.30am to 5pm in call centre. One of the Front of house agents is finishing early at 12pm. The Front of House Team Leader requests afternoon cover so the Contact Centre send the hybrid agent to Front of House from 12pm to 5pm. WFM updates the hybrids schedule in the call centre roster using an activity code of "FOH" from 12pm to 5pm. 

Ideally, when the change is made, then the FOH roster is updated automatically so that the Team Leader at Front of House can see "Oh, XX is coming over at 12pm"

Thoughts?

Regards

Adam Strang