Hi Wendy,
apologies for the confusion, there is a little more information in the resource centre article:
The new feature "Workforce management business unit and service goal template impact override settings" is a precursor for some of the upcoming automated and self-scheduling features like:
these new Service Goal override settings will set the upper and lower impacts that an Admin is prepared to accept when Activities are scheduled by other system processes such as:
- Coaching
- Learning
- Activity Plans
- Ability to Trade with Alternative Shifts from the System
or self-scheduling by employees and supervisors.
When looking for the optimal session time these features will look for points in the schedule that will not take the Service Goal below a given range, or in the case of a shift trade not exceed your Service Goal by more than the permitted range.
For example:
When scheduling Team Briefing sessions as an Admin I am happy for the service level to drop to 75% from my usual target of 80% as this is an important communication and update process for the employees.
Going forward when scheduling Team Briefings through an Activity Plan. The system would only look for sessions where the Service Goals could support the request. When using the Service Level as your Service Goal, if the Service Level could not support the request it will look for periods where a reduced Service Level of 75% could support the request for scheduling sessions..
In the case of a Shift trade the Admin may want to cap the improvement to Service Level, going over 85% might be seen as expensive as there is excessive overstaffing.
Using the new Service Goal overrides the Ability to Trade with Alternative Shifts from the System and would offer the employee a trade option that fits within the Service Level range of 75-85%.
This offers the employee flexibility and the option to trade shifts at short notice and protects the business from large Service Goal fluctuations and additional costs of being overstaffed.
Until these new features are released "Workforce management business unit and service goal template impact override settings" will enable you to prepare by configuring your "global" BU level overrides and specific Service Goal template overrides. You may want selected Service goal templates to have a different range, maybe you have a VIP business channel that has protected Service Goals.
Once set, or just using the default values, we will start to include the upper and lower staffing levels to meet the Service Goal Override ranges in our Staffing Requirement forecasts. By having this already included in the Staffing Requirement Forecasts you will be able to make effective use of features, like Activity Plans and Ability to Trade with Alternative Shifts from the System, out of the box without having to recalculate Staffing forecasts.
I hope this helps with your understanding and clears up the confusion.
Paul