Hi John
While possible to update and use skills this way this is not the intent of skills allocation to make those 'intraday' changes. The changes to skills will remove (and then re-add) agents back to not just WFM Planning groups but also Learning Modules, Gamification and Potentially Analytics reports as well - so it can cause an operational impact.
Typically the most common use case for changing skills like this is through managing customer demand and routing. The intent of allocating skills, languages and queues to agents should be off the back of them 'gaining the ability' to do that work through training.
Recommended best practices are to use Routing Design, Skills Based Routing and Proficiency Scores - and potentially even callback to handle those customer surplus scenarios, another way to think about it is if the employee can do the work (knowledge) they should be allocated the skills to support that work (even if they are lower in the preferred target groups). This would then allow capabilities like WFM to understand the environment.
If for example you built your schedule during the skills removed time period, the schedule built would not have this agent helping out on these planning groups.
This graphic might help with a bigger picture view - the system itself is inter-connected so a great way to think about skills and queue/media allocation is about what 'role' the employee has in your business.
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Cameron Smith
VP, Product Management - Workforce Engagement Management
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