Workforce Engagement Management

Gathering historical scheduling data for the past 52 weeks in Genesys Cloud presented a significant operational challenge. Due to our weekly scheduling practices, accessing data prior to October 20, 2024, required a manual, week-by-week search using the calendar widget. This process involved approximately 30 individual searches and consumed several hours of dedicated time, necessitating the postponement of other tasks.

We also explored alternative scheduling approaches, such as publishing monthly schedules, but determined that this does not align with our operational needs and weekly cadence.

The current system's limitations in efficiently accessing historical data impacted our ability to fulfill the initial data request comprehensively, requiring a scope adjustment to accommodate the time constraints. Specifically, the standard navigation tools for published schedules appear to become non-functional for dates preceding October 20, 2024. Furthermore, this particular instance involved retrieving attendance data, which could not be accessed through the Historical Adherence section, highlighting a gap in alternative reporting functionalities for this type of historical information.

This experience underscores a critical need for improvement in accessing historical scheduling data within Genesys Cloud.

Therefore, we have two specific calls to action:

To the Genesys Development Team:

What potential solutions could be implemented to streamline the retrieval of historical scheduling data across a specified date range, especially for periods beyond the current navigation limitations?

We urge you to consider the priority of these types of enhancements on the product roadmap, given the significant time and resource implications of the current process. Understanding the planned timeline for addressing these limitations would be greatly appreciated.

To the Genesys Community:

We are also interested in learning from the experiences of other Genesys Cloud users. Have you encountered similar challenges when retrieving historical scheduling data? If so, what workarounds or alternative methods have you implemented to overcome these limitations? Sharing your insights and solutions would be invaluable as we collectively seek more efficient ways to manage and analyze historical workforce data.

Thank you for your time and consideration of this critical feedback.

#WFMConfiguration,BestPractices
#Workforce Management
#ScheduleManagement
#Product Idea

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Gene Gutierrez | Workforce Coordinator
Presbyterian Customer Service Center
Albuquerque, NM
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Could you give some reasons why you need to look at schedules 7, 8, 9, etc. months ago?

What percent of schedule access is not part of looking at schedules a few weeks in the future or a few weeks in the past (let's say +/- 16w)? 

EDIT:

If I wanted to see historical adherence, my first stop would be historical adherence view. Granted we only allow 30d duration query segments today. Traversing published schedules to look at adherence would not be something that would come to mind or something I would suggest. Besides the 30d perhaps not being sufficient, what information is lacking in the historical adherence view?

Rather than wading through the minutia, think up to 5K agents, the historical adherence view allows one to sort/filter to focus on what is important (e.g., sig low adh, sig high number of exceptions, etc.) with the ability to export and drill down to the exceptions.

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Jay Langsford
VP, R&D
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Thank you for your response. We appreciate your engagement with our feedback.

While we understand your inquiry about the specific reasons for needing to access historical schedules from several months ago, it's important to emphasize that our immediate concern stems from the operational challenges we encountered while attempting to retrieve data for the past year. In this specific instance, we needed to review attendance data for a group of agents to inform the development of an internal attendance tracking solution, given the absence of a native Genesys Cloud offering in this area. For context, the need to access historical data could extend significantly further, such as in potential legal scenarios like wrongful termination suits, where retaining records for up to seven years may be necessary.

Beyond this specific project, there are numerous other scenarios where accessing historical scheduling data is crucial.

Our Medical Leave team, for instance, frequently needs to complete reviews of agent actions for the last year, which can and has required updating records, such as FMLA absences, retroactively over the previous twelve months. The current manual process makes these essential administrative tasks unnecessarily burdensome and time-consuming.

Other examples may include:

• Compliance Audits: Many industries face regulatory requirements that necessitate the ability to produce historical records, including scheduling and attendance data, for audits that can span several years.
• Performance Trend Analysis: Identifying long-term performance trends for individuals or teams often requires analyzing data over many months to understand patterns and the impact of implemented strategies.
• Forecasting and Capacity Planning: Accurately predicting future staffing needs and optimizing capacity often relies on analyzing historical scheduling data over annual cycles to account for seasonality and other long-term trends.
• Investigating Discrepancies: When discrepancies or issues arise, investigating them thoroughly might require looking back at schedules from several months prior to understand the context and contributing factors.

Therefore, while understanding the frequency of historical data access might be helpful for your prioritization, we believe the focus should be on addressing the usability and efficiency of accessing this data when the business need arises, whatever that need may be. The current limitations create a tangible operational burden across various essential business functions.

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Gene Gutierrez | Workforce Analyst
Presbyterian Workforce Management
Albuquerque, NM
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-23-2025 09:39
From: Jay Langsford
Subject: Issues with historical attendance (schedule data)

Could you give some reasons why you need to look at schedules 7, 8, 9, etc. months ago?

What percent of schedule access is not part of looking at schedules a few weeks in the future or a few weeks in the past (let's say +/- 16w)? 

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Jay Langsford
VP, R&D
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Hi Gene and team :), 

Thanks for sharing your ideas. Within our analytics module, we are working towards building a report similar to what you are describing. In the meantime, as Shannon has mentioned, the data is available via our APIs and can be utilized with Power BI or Tableau for generating reports. We have an A3S solution in our app foundry that includes a WFM Schedule Activities Tableau template, which provides the necessary data. In the meantime, we are working to build this report in Genesys; it is definitely on the higher-priority list, and I am personally working with our reporting team to complete it.

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Damaris Scott
Senior Product Manager, Workforce Management
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-23-2025 11:52
From: Gene Gutierrez
Subject: Issues with historical attendance (schedule data)

Thank you for your response. We appreciate your engagement with our feedback.

While we understand your inquiry about the specific reasons for needing to access historical schedules from several months ago, it's important to emphasize that our immediate concern stems from the operational challenges we encountered while attempting to retrieve data for the past year. In this specific instance, we needed to review attendance data for a group of agents to inform the development of an internal attendance tracking solution, given the absence of a native Genesys Cloud offering in this area. For context, the need to access historical data could extend significantly further, such as in potential legal scenarios like wrongful termination suits, where retaining records for up to seven years may be necessary.

Beyond this specific project, there are numerous other scenarios where accessing historical scheduling data is crucial.

Our Medical Leave team, for instance, frequently needs to complete reviews of agent actions for the last year, which can and has required updating records, such as FMLA absences, retroactively over the previous twelve months. The current manual process makes these essential administrative tasks unnecessarily burdensome and time-consuming.

Other examples may include:

• Compliance Audits: Many industries face regulatory requirements that necessitate the ability to produce historical records, including scheduling and attendance data, for audits that can span several years.
• Performance Trend Analysis: Identifying long-term performance trends for individuals or teams often requires analyzing data over many months to understand patterns and the impact of implemented strategies.
• Forecasting and Capacity Planning: Accurately predicting future staffing needs and optimizing capacity often relies on analyzing historical scheduling data over annual cycles to account for seasonality and other long-term trends.
• Investigating Discrepancies: When discrepancies or issues arise, investigating them thoroughly might require looking back at schedules from several months prior to understand the context and contributing factors.

Therefore, while understanding the frequency of historical data access might be helpful for your prioritization, we believe the focus should be on addressing the usability and efficiency of accessing this data when the business need arises, whatever that need may be. The current limitations create a tangible operational burden across various essential business functions.

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Gene Gutierrez | Workforce Analyst
Presbyterian Workforce Management
Albuquerque, NM
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-23-2025 09:39
From: Jay Langsford
Subject: Issues with historical attendance (schedule data)

Could you give some reasons why you need to look at schedules 7, 8, 9, etc. months ago?

What percent of schedule access is not part of looking at schedules a few weeks in the future or a few weeks in the past (let's say +/- 16w)? 

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Jay Langsford
VP, R&D

Hi Gene - We have the same problem as you since we also publish weekly. To get scheduling data, we have a BI dashboard that pulls all the scheduling segments, so we aren't constricted to this data by a weekly view in Gen.

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Shannon Hellner
WFM manager
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I am with you @Gene Gutierrez.  We need the ability to easily retrieve activity codes from the past 52 weeks, when we need them.  Our data team create something but it is not sufficient for my needs.  It give me the duration of the activity code, but not the start and stop,  The inability to pull activity codes from schedules as I please is one of my pain points with this product.  

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Gina Palmer
Manager, Workforce Management
Papa, Inc.
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