Workforce Engagement Management

Our team has tried exhaustively to make Activity Plans work for our team with very inconsistent results.  I don't know if we have an unrealistic expectations of what we are trying to do with it or if we are missing something obvious.  Here is the basic scenario we are trying to achieve with activity plans: schedule recurring activities.  

Case Scenario:

• Schedule a weekly 45 min training session for all of our on queue and off queue agents.
• The goal is to have it schedule the session on the best day/interval each week, on a recurring basis.  
• We schedule on a monthly basis that consists of 4 or 5 weeks in each scheduling period.
• In various tests and tweaks of the settings here are the shortcomings we see:
  • It does not consistently schedule each agent each week.  For example, several agents might be scheduled for Week 1 but not for Week 2 (or whatever week #).  
  • It often heavily skews to scheduling agents on Thurs or Friday which could possibly make sense as those tend to be lighter volume days however it also can be lighter staffing those days as more people request off.  

If anyone has been able to actually get this to work with scheduling people consistently please share how you are doing it and/or screen shots of the tabs on the activity plans so we can compare our settings.  

Attendees Tab is just the workgroups we selected, no facilitator, Service Goal Override set to "Favor scheduling all attendees". and Session availability is each WEEKDAY 9-530.  

Thanks!

Hi Tom, 

Your scenario should be possible with Activity Plans; there are a few things that we could check or tweak to help find sessions for everyone:

• Relax the maximum simultaneous sessions from 2
  • With this in place, you are saying that only 2 people can be scheduled for training at the same time. This is not always helpful, as in quieter periods of the day/week there might be enough over-staffing to schedule more sessions without impacting service level.
• Remove the Maximum Number of sessions (8)
  • This explicitly tells Activity Planner to schedule no more than 8 sessions for the period and group. In your scenario, after the 8th person has been scheduled, the Activity Plan we stop scheduling sessions.
• Remove the Session Availability constraints
  • Unless there is a reason for restricting the session availability, it is best to leave these blank and allow the service goal impacts to determine the best time for the sessions.
  • Session Availability is best used for scenarios like:
    • sessions must mirror room availability
    • sessions must mirror an external trainer/facilitator's availability

Changing these settings should help a lot with achieving your goal. 

If you are still finding that large numbers of attendees are not being scheduled. It might be worth revising your service goal impacts, either at the Business Unit level, Service Goal Template or Activity Plan Custom Settings.

After doing this, consider switching  "Favor scheduling all attendees" to "Favor service goal"

You can read more about these settings here:

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/service-goal-impacts-overview/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/#tab4

Our team has tried exhaustively to make Activity Plans work for our team with very inconsistent results.  I don't know if we have an unrealistic expectations of what we are trying to do with it or if we are missing something obvious.  Here is the basic scenario we are trying to achieve with activity plans: schedule recurring activities.  

Case Scenario:

• Schedule a weekly 45 min training session for all of our on queue and off queue agents.
• The goal is to have it schedule the session on the best day/interval each week, on a recurring basis.  
• We schedule on a monthly basis that consists of 4 or 5 weeks in each scheduling period.
• In various tests and tweaks of the settings here are the shortcomings we see:
  • It does not consistently schedule each agent each week.  For example, several agents might be scheduled for Week 1 but not for Week 2 (or whatever week #).  
  • It often heavily skews to scheduling agents on Thurs or Friday which could possibly make sense as those tend to be lighter volume days however it also can be lighter staffing those days as more people request off.  

If anyone has been able to actually get this to work with scheduling people consistently please share how you are doing it and/or screen shots of the tabs on the activity plans so we can compare our settings.  

Attendees Tab is just the workgroups we selected, no facilitator, Service Goal Override set to "Favor scheduling all attendees". and Session availability is each WEEKDAY 9-530.  

Thanks!

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the info.  Doing some quick testing yesterday your suggestions seem to help produce some better results.  I think sometimes the wording or labeling of things can be a little vague so it leaves it open to interpretation.  For example, maximum number of sessions, I wasn't clear if that meant per day, per week etc and you clarified for me that it is total number of sessions period.  I appreciate your help and will let you know if I encounter any other issues.  Thanks!

Hi Tom, 

Your scenario should be possible with Activity Plans; there are a few things that we could check or tweak to help find sessions for everyone:

• Relax the maximum simultaneous sessions from 2
  • With this in place, you are saying that only 2 people can be scheduled for training at the same time. This is not always helpful, as in quieter periods of the day/week there might be enough over-staffing to schedule more sessions without impacting service level.
• Remove the Maximum Number of sessions (8)
  • This explicitly tells Activity Planner to schedule no more than 8 sessions for the period and group. In your scenario, after the 8th person has been scheduled, the Activity Plan we stop scheduling sessions.
• Remove the Session Availability constraints
  • Unless there is a reason for restricting the session availability, it is best to leave these blank and allow the service goal impacts to determine the best time for the sessions.
  • Session Availability is best used for scenarios like:
    • sessions must mirror room availability
    • sessions must mirror an external trainer/facilitator's availability

Changing these settings should help a lot with achieving your goal. 

If you are still finding that large numbers of attendees are not being scheduled. It might be worth revising your service goal impacts, either at the Business Unit level, Service Goal Template or Activity Plan Custom Settings.

After doing this, consider switching  "Favor scheduling all attendees" to "Favor service goal"

You can read more about these settings here:

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/service-goal-impacts-overview/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/#tab4

Our team has tried exhaustively to make Activity Plans work for our team with very inconsistent results.  I don't know if we have an unrealistic expectations of what we are trying to do with it or if we are missing something obvious.  Here is the basic scenario we are trying to achieve with activity plans: schedule recurring activities.  

Case Scenario:

• Schedule a weekly 45 min training session for all of our on queue and off queue agents.
• The goal is to have it schedule the session on the best day/interval each week, on a recurring basis.  
• We schedule on a monthly basis that consists of 4 or 5 weeks in each scheduling period.
• In various tests and tweaks of the settings here are the shortcomings we see:
  • It does not consistently schedule each agent each week.  For example, several agents might be scheduled for Week 1 but not for Week 2 (or whatever week #).  
  • It often heavily skews to scheduling agents on Thurs or Friday which could possibly make sense as those tend to be lighter volume days however it also can be lighter staffing those days as more people request off.  

If anyone has been able to actually get this to work with scheduling people consistently please share how you are doing it and/or screen shots of the tabs on the activity plans so we can compare our settings.  

Attendees Tab is just the workgroups we selected, no facilitator, Service Goal Override set to "Favor scheduling all attendees". and Session availability is each WEEKDAY 9-530.  

Thanks!

Hi Paul, 

I did have a couple of follow up questions upon further testing.  Hope you can help with these also.  The process tends to skew towards scheduling most of the sessions on a Thursday or Friday.  While these days of the week are typically lower volume days it doesn't explain why large volumes of them don't get scheduled until the end of the week.  

A second issue we noticed is that sometimes, for example,  Agent A might have off Monday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday.  So logic would tell you that the system would try to find a time on Tuesday, when they are working, to schedule the training session.  Instead though, it might schedule Agent B who is here every day of the week on Tuesday instead of someone who only has the option of being scheduled on Tuesday.  Is there a way to force it to schedule the person on Tuesday who only has that day available to be scheduled instead?  It feels like since it is heavily scheduling people on Th and F, if you are not in one or both of those days, you might not get scheduled at all for that week.  

In the example below, in Week 1 the system scheduled the agent for their "Summit" training on Friday.  But in Week 2, she was not schedule at all on M-W (I think) because she is off Th and F and the system seems to prefer scheduling her on those days.  Any thoughts or ideas on this issue?  

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the info.  Doing some quick testing yesterday your suggestions seem to help produce some better results.  I think sometimes the wording or labeling of things can be a little vague so it leaves it open to interpretation.  For example, maximum number of sessions, I wasn't clear if that meant per day, per week etc and you clarified for me that it is total number of sessions period.  I appreciate your help and will let you know if I encounter any other issues.  Thanks!

Hi Tom, 

Your scenario should be possible with Activity Plans; there are a few things that we could check or tweak to help find sessions for everyone:

• Relax the maximum simultaneous sessions from 2
  • With this in place, you are saying that only 2 people can be scheduled for training at the same time. This is not always helpful, as in quieter periods of the day/week there might be enough over-staffing to schedule more sessions without impacting service level.
• Remove the Maximum Number of sessions (8)
  • This explicitly tells Activity Planner to schedule no more than 8 sessions for the period and group. In your scenario, after the 8th person has been scheduled, the Activity Plan we stop scheduling sessions.
• Remove the Session Availability constraints
  • Unless there is a reason for restricting the session availability, it is best to leave these blank and allow the service goal impacts to determine the best time for the sessions.
  • Session Availability is best used for scenarios like:
    • sessions must mirror room availability
    • sessions must mirror an external trainer/facilitator's availability

Changing these settings should help a lot with achieving your goal. 

If you are still finding that large numbers of attendees are not being scheduled. It might be worth revising your service goal impacts, either at the Business Unit level, Service Goal Template or Activity Plan Custom Settings.

After doing this, consider switching  "Favor scheduling all attendees" to "Favor service goal"

You can read more about these settings here:

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/service-goal-impacts-overview/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/#tab4

Our team has tried exhaustively to make Activity Plans work for our team with very inconsistent results.  I don't know if we have an unrealistic expectations of what we are trying to do with it or if we are missing something obvious.  Here is the basic scenario we are trying to achieve with activity plans: schedule recurring activities.  

Case Scenario:

• Schedule a weekly 45 min training session for all of our on queue and off queue agents.
• The goal is to have it schedule the session on the best day/interval each week, on a recurring basis.  
• We schedule on a monthly basis that consists of 4 or 5 weeks in each scheduling period.
• In various tests and tweaks of the settings here are the shortcomings we see:
  • It does not consistently schedule each agent each week.  For example, several agents might be scheduled for Week 1 but not for Week 2 (or whatever week #).  
  • It often heavily skews to scheduling agents on Thurs or Friday which could possibly make sense as those tend to be lighter volume days however it also can be lighter staffing those days as more people request off.  

If anyone has been able to actually get this to work with scheduling people consistently please share how you are doing it and/or screen shots of the tabs on the activity plans so we can compare our settings.  

Attendees Tab is just the workgroups we selected, no facilitator, Service Goal Override set to "Favor scheduling all attendees". and Session availability is each WEEKDAY 9-530.  

Thanks!

Hi Tom, 

Apologies for the delay, I've just returned from leave. 

This could be one of those challenges where the algorithm is looking at the problem mathematically rather than with human judgment. 
On the surface of things, to the human eye, scheduling Agent A on a Tuesday makes more sense. However, in the background, their skill mix and resulting impact on service predictions might take the service level below the threshold set within your Service Goal Impact configuration(s) (articles-service goal impacts overview), or there might be other non-interuptable activities scheduled on a Tuesday that prevent a session from being allocated.

I'd take a look at the Service Goal Impacts and refine them so that you can schedule more sessions Monday - Wednesday. These being busier days of the week, they might struggle to meet the lower permitted Service Goals. This could also help with the Agent A scenario.
Also, review any smaller Planning Groups to see if creating specific Service Goal Impacts for these will help.

Hi Paul, 

I did have a couple of follow up questions upon further testing.  Hope you can help with these also.  The process tends to skew towards scheduling most of the sessions on a Thursday or Friday.  While these days of the week are typically lower volume days it doesn't explain why large volumes of them don't get scheduled until the end of the week.  

A second issue we noticed is that sometimes, for example,  Agent A might have off Monday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday.  So logic would tell you that the system would try to find a time on Tuesday, when they are working, to schedule the training session.  Instead though, it might schedule Agent B who is here every day of the week on Tuesday instead of someone who only has the option of being scheduled on Tuesday.  Is there a way to force it to schedule the person on Tuesday who only has that day available to be scheduled instead?  It feels like since it is heavily scheduling people on Th and F, if you are not in one or both of those days, you might not get scheduled at all for that week.  

In the example below, in Week 1 the system scheduled the agent for their "Summit" training on Friday.  But in Week 2, she was not schedule at all on M-W (I think) because she is off Th and F and the system seems to prefer scheduling her on those days.  Any thoughts or ideas on this issue?  

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the info.  Doing some quick testing yesterday your suggestions seem to help produce some better results.  I think sometimes the wording or labeling of things can be a little vague so it leaves it open to interpretation.  For example, maximum number of sessions, I wasn't clear if that meant per day, per week etc and you clarified for me that it is total number of sessions period.  I appreciate your help and will let you know if I encounter any other issues.  Thanks!

Hi Tom, 

Your scenario should be possible with Activity Plans; there are a few things that we could check or tweak to help find sessions for everyone:

• Relax the maximum simultaneous sessions from 2
  • With this in place, you are saying that only 2 people can be scheduled for training at the same time. This is not always helpful, as in quieter periods of the day/week there might be enough over-staffing to schedule more sessions without impacting service level.
• Remove the Maximum Number of sessions (8)
  • This explicitly tells Activity Planner to schedule no more than 8 sessions for the period and group. In your scenario, after the 8th person has been scheduled, the Activity Plan we stop scheduling sessions.
• Remove the Session Availability constraints
  • Unless there is a reason for restricting the session availability, it is best to leave these blank and allow the service goal impacts to determine the best time for the sessions.
  • Session Availability is best used for scenarios like:
    • sessions must mirror room availability
    • sessions must mirror an external trainer/facilitator's availability

Changing these settings should help a lot with achieving your goal. 

If you are still finding that large numbers of attendees are not being scheduled. It might be worth revising your service goal impacts, either at the Business Unit level, Service Goal Template or Activity Plan Custom Settings.

After doing this, consider switching  "Favor scheduling all attendees" to "Favor service goal"

You can read more about these settings here:

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/service-goal-impacts-overview/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/#tab4

Our team has tried exhaustively to make Activity Plans work for our team with very inconsistent results.  I don't know if we have an unrealistic expectations of what we are trying to do with it or if we are missing something obvious.  Here is the basic scenario we are trying to achieve with activity plans: schedule recurring activities.  

Case Scenario:

• Schedule a weekly 45 min training session for all of our on queue and off queue agents.
• The goal is to have it schedule the session on the best day/interval each week, on a recurring basis.  
• We schedule on a monthly basis that consists of 4 or 5 weeks in each scheduling period.
• In various tests and tweaks of the settings here are the shortcomings we see:
  • It does not consistently schedule each agent each week.  For example, several agents might be scheduled for Week 1 but not for Week 2 (or whatever week #).  
  • It often heavily skews to scheduling agents on Thurs or Friday which could possibly make sense as those tend to be lighter volume days however it also can be lighter staffing those days as more people request off.  

If anyone has been able to actually get this to work with scheduling people consistently please share how you are doing it and/or screen shots of the tabs on the activity plans so we can compare our settings.  

Attendees Tab is just the workgroups we selected, no facilitator, Service Goal Override set to "Favor scheduling all attendees". and Session availability is each WEEKDAY 9-530.  

Thanks!

Hi @Paul Wood 
We are hopeful to try using Activity Plans in our schedules but I have a few questions that I want to clarify ahead of time. 

1) We don't use scheduling periods - we release one week at a time. If we want to schedule all agents into a meeting over the course of one month (4 different schedules), is the tool smart enough to ensure that if Agent A was scheduled in week 1, not to schedule them again at all and to focus only on those who still need to attend a meeting that month? Or because we release one week at a time, will the Activity Plan schedule Agent A on week 1 and then possibly again on week 2, and 3, and 4? 

2) When we add activities to multiple agents in the live schedule, that feature drops the event on top of breaks, covering them up. We then need to go searching through the schedule to find where we need to re-add breaks/lunches. Will the activity planner do the same? Or will it schedule *around* breaks and lunches? 

Thanks for your help!

Hi Tom, 

Apologies for the delay, I've just returned from leave. 

This could be one of those challenges where the algorithm is looking at the problem mathematically rather than with human judgment. 
On the surface of things, to the human eye, scheduling Agent A on a Tuesday makes more sense. However, in the background, their skill mix and resulting impact on service predictions might take the service level below the threshold set within your Service Goal Impact configuration(s) (articles-service goal impacts overview), or there might be other non-interuptable activities scheduled on a Tuesday that prevent a session from being allocated.

I'd take a look at the Service Goal Impacts and refine them so that you can schedule more sessions Monday - Wednesday. These being busier days of the week, they might struggle to meet the lower permitted Service Goals. This could also help with the Agent A scenario.
Also, review any smaller Planning Groups to see if creating specific Service Goal Impacts for these will help.

Hi Paul, 

I did have a couple of follow up questions upon further testing.  Hope you can help with these also.  The process tends to skew towards scheduling most of the sessions on a Thursday or Friday.  While these days of the week are typically lower volume days it doesn't explain why large volumes of them don't get scheduled until the end of the week.  

A second issue we noticed is that sometimes, for example,  Agent A might have off Monday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday.  So logic would tell you that the system would try to find a time on Tuesday, when they are working, to schedule the training session.  Instead though, it might schedule Agent B who is here every day of the week on Tuesday instead of someone who only has the option of being scheduled on Tuesday.  Is there a way to force it to schedule the person on Tuesday who only has that day available to be scheduled instead?  It feels like since it is heavily scheduling people on Th and F, if you are not in one or both of those days, you might not get scheduled at all for that week.  

In the example below, in Week 1 the system scheduled the agent for their "Summit" training on Friday.  But in Week 2, she was not schedule at all on M-W (I think) because she is off Th and F and the system seems to prefer scheduling her on those days.  Any thoughts or ideas on this issue?  

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the info.  Doing some quick testing yesterday your suggestions seem to help produce some better results.  I think sometimes the wording or labeling of things can be a little vague so it leaves it open to interpretation.  For example, maximum number of sessions, I wasn't clear if that meant per day, per week etc and you clarified for me that it is total number of sessions period.  I appreciate your help and will let you know if I encounter any other issues.  Thanks!

Hi Tom, 

Your scenario should be possible with Activity Plans; there are a few things that we could check or tweak to help find sessions for everyone:

• Relax the maximum simultaneous sessions from 2
  • With this in place, you are saying that only 2 people can be scheduled for training at the same time. This is not always helpful, as in quieter periods of the day/week there might be enough over-staffing to schedule more sessions without impacting service level.
• Remove the Maximum Number of sessions (8)
  • This explicitly tells Activity Planner to schedule no more than 8 sessions for the period and group. In your scenario, after the 8th person has been scheduled, the Activity Plan we stop scheduling sessions.
• Remove the Session Availability constraints
  • Unless there is a reason for restricting the session availability, it is best to leave these blank and allow the service goal impacts to determine the best time for the sessions.
  • Session Availability is best used for scenarios like:
    • sessions must mirror room availability
    • sessions must mirror an external trainer/facilitator's availability

Changing these settings should help a lot with achieving your goal. 

If you are still finding that large numbers of attendees are not being scheduled. It might be worth revising your service goal impacts, either at the Business Unit level, Service Goal Template or Activity Plan Custom Settings.

After doing this, consider switching  "Favor scheduling all attendees" to "Favor service goal"

You can read more about these settings here:

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/service-goal-impacts-overview/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/#tab4

Our team has tried exhaustively to make Activity Plans work for our team with very inconsistent results.  I don't know if we have an unrealistic expectations of what we are trying to do with it or if we are missing something obvious.  Here is the basic scenario we are trying to achieve with activity plans: schedule recurring activities.  

Case Scenario:

• Schedule a weekly 45 min training session for all of our on queue and off queue agents.
• The goal is to have it schedule the session on the best day/interval each week, on a recurring basis.  
• We schedule on a monthly basis that consists of 4 or 5 weeks in each scheduling period.
• In various tests and tweaks of the settings here are the shortcomings we see:
  • It does not consistently schedule each agent each week.  For example, several agents might be scheduled for Week 1 but not for Week 2 (or whatever week #).  
  • It often heavily skews to scheduling agents on Thurs or Friday which could possibly make sense as those tend to be lighter volume days however it also can be lighter staffing those days as more people request off.  

If anyone has been able to actually get this to work with scheduling people consistently please share how you are doing it and/or screen shots of the tabs on the activity plans so we can compare our settings.  

Attendees Tab is just the workgroups we selected, no facilitator, Service Goal Override set to "Favor scheduling all attendees". and Session availability is each WEEKDAY 9-530.  

Thanks!

Hi Meaghan, 

1. Yes,  the underlying "Best Time For" algorithm works independently of Planning Periods. "Best Time For" (BTF) uses the occurrence date and period. For example, if you set the initial start date to September 1st with a 4-week recurrence period. BTF would know that:

• • Occurrence 1 = 1st - 28th Sept
  • Occurrence 2 = 29th Sept - 26th October
  • Occurrence 3 =  27th October - 23rd November

and that it should review all published schedules during these periods to schedule the sessions. 
There are a couple of caveats when generating the 1st schedule for the occurrence period BTF will look to schedule ALL sessions in the 1st week as there are no other weeks to consider. Equally, when running the Activity Plan ad hoc, if there are not 4 full weeks of published schedules, BTF will look to schedule the sessions in the 

The easiest way to work around this is for the first occurrence is to:

• Set the minimum time between sessions to 3 weeks
• For the 1st run/schedule/week, add a quarter of the attendees
• Add another quarter of attendees for each week until you have scheduled the first 4-week occurrence period

Following the 1st occurrence, the Activity Plan will manage itself.

2. Activity Planner will only interrupt other scheduled activities if you have the "is interruptable" checkbox selected in the Activity Code configuration

Hope this helps, please check out the post for the Activity Plans drop-in-clinic where I'll be providing live support for any Activity Plan challenges for more tips and advice.

Paul

Hi @Paul Wood 
We are hopeful to try using Activity Plans in our schedules but I have a few questions that I want to clarify ahead of time. 

1) We don't use scheduling periods - we release one week at a time. If we want to schedule all agents into a meeting over the course of one month (4 different schedules), is the tool smart enough to ensure that if Agent A was scheduled in week 1, not to schedule them again at all and to focus only on those who still need to attend a meeting that month? Or because we release one week at a time, will the Activity Plan schedule Agent A on week 1 and then possibly again on week 2, and 3, and 4? 

2) When we add activities to multiple agents in the live schedule, that feature drops the event on top of breaks, covering them up. We then need to go searching through the schedule to find where we need to re-add breaks/lunches. Will the activity planner do the same? Or will it schedule *around* breaks and lunches? 

Thanks for your help!

Hi Tom, 

Apologies for the delay, I've just returned from leave. 

This could be one of those challenges where the algorithm is looking at the problem mathematically rather than with human judgment. 
On the surface of things, to the human eye, scheduling Agent A on a Tuesday makes more sense. However, in the background, their skill mix and resulting impact on service predictions might take the service level below the threshold set within your Service Goal Impact configuration(s) (articles-service goal impacts overview), or there might be other non-interuptable activities scheduled on a Tuesday that prevent a session from being allocated.

I'd take a look at the Service Goal Impacts and refine them so that you can schedule more sessions Monday - Wednesday. These being busier days of the week, they might struggle to meet the lower permitted Service Goals. This could also help with the Agent A scenario.
Also, review any smaller Planning Groups to see if creating specific Service Goal Impacts for these will help.

Hi Paul, 

I did have a couple of follow up questions upon further testing.  Hope you can help with these also.  The process tends to skew towards scheduling most of the sessions on a Thursday or Friday.  While these days of the week are typically lower volume days it doesn't explain why large volumes of them don't get scheduled until the end of the week.  

A second issue we noticed is that sometimes, for example,  Agent A might have off Monday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday.  So logic would tell you that the system would try to find a time on Tuesday, when they are working, to schedule the training session.  Instead though, it might schedule Agent B who is here every day of the week on Tuesday instead of someone who only has the option of being scheduled on Tuesday.  Is there a way to force it to schedule the person on Tuesday who only has that day available to be scheduled instead?  It feels like since it is heavily scheduling people on Th and F, if you are not in one or both of those days, you might not get scheduled at all for that week.  

In the example below, in Week 1 the system scheduled the agent for their "Summit" training on Friday.  But in Week 2, she was not schedule at all on M-W (I think) because she is off Th and F and the system seems to prefer scheduling her on those days.  Any thoughts or ideas on this issue?  

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the info.  Doing some quick testing yesterday your suggestions seem to help produce some better results.  I think sometimes the wording or labeling of things can be a little vague so it leaves it open to interpretation.  For example, maximum number of sessions, I wasn't clear if that meant per day, per week etc and you clarified for me that it is total number of sessions period.  I appreciate your help and will let you know if I encounter any other issues.  Thanks!

Hi Tom, 

Your scenario should be possible with Activity Plans; there are a few things that we could check or tweak to help find sessions for everyone:

• Relax the maximum simultaneous sessions from 2
  • With this in place, you are saying that only 2 people can be scheduled for training at the same time. This is not always helpful, as in quieter periods of the day/week there might be enough over-staffing to schedule more sessions without impacting service level.
• Remove the Maximum Number of sessions (8)
  • This explicitly tells Activity Planner to schedule no more than 8 sessions for the period and group. In your scenario, after the 8th person has been scheduled, the Activity Plan we stop scheduling sessions.
• Remove the Session Availability constraints
  • Unless there is a reason for restricting the session availability, it is best to leave these blank and allow the service goal impacts to determine the best time for the sessions.
  • Session Availability is best used for scenarios like:
    • sessions must mirror room availability
    • sessions must mirror an external trainer/facilitator's availability

Changing these settings should help a lot with achieving your goal. 

If you are still finding that large numbers of attendees are not being scheduled. It might be worth revising your service goal impacts, either at the Business Unit level, Service Goal Template or Activity Plan Custom Settings.

After doing this, consider switching  "Favor scheduling all attendees" to "Favor service goal"

You can read more about these settings here:

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/service-goal-impacts-overview/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/#tab4

Our team has tried exhaustively to make Activity Plans work for our team with very inconsistent results.  I don't know if we have an unrealistic expectations of what we are trying to do with it or if we are missing something obvious.  Here is the basic scenario we are trying to achieve with activity plans: schedule recurring activities.  

Case Scenario:

• Schedule a weekly 45 min training session for all of our on queue and off queue agents.
• The goal is to have it schedule the session on the best day/interval each week, on a recurring basis.  
• We schedule on a monthly basis that consists of 4 or 5 weeks in each scheduling period.
• In various tests and tweaks of the settings here are the shortcomings we see:
  • It does not consistently schedule each agent each week.  For example, several agents might be scheduled for Week 1 but not for Week 2 (or whatever week #).  
  • It often heavily skews to scheduling agents on Thurs or Friday which could possibly make sense as those tend to be lighter volume days however it also can be lighter staffing those days as more people request off.  

If anyone has been able to actually get this to work with scheduling people consistently please share how you are doing it and/or screen shots of the tabs on the activity plans so we can compare our settings.  

Attendees Tab is just the workgroups we selected, no facilitator, Service Goal Override set to "Favor scheduling all attendees". and Session availability is each WEEKDAY 9-530.  

Thanks!

Hi @Paul Wood

We've run an activity plan for a period of Oct 12-Nov 8, attempting to schedule every agent (there are several hundred) into an elearning session (individual). 
These schedules are all published. 
The tool scheduled 70 agents in one 30 minute interval on October 13. Now, this is a holiday, and the forecast does suggest that we are 'overstaffed' during the interval, however I assumed that it would try to spread out the sessions? While the forecast might suggest 70 people off at once is feasible, it just seems odd that it could spread things out over the course of several weeks a little more evenly. Thoughts? 

Thanks
Meaghan 

Hi Meaghan, 

1. Yes,  the underlying "Best Time For" algorithm works independently of Planning Periods. "Best Time For" (BTF) uses the occurrence date and period. For example, if you set the initial start date to September 1st with a 4-week recurrence period. BTF would know that:

• • Occurrence 1 = 1st - 28th Sept
  • Occurrence 2 = 29th Sept - 26th October
  • Occurrence 3 =  27th October - 23rd November

and that it should review all published schedules during these periods to schedule the sessions. 
There are a couple of caveats when generating the 1st schedule for the occurrence period BTF will look to schedule ALL sessions in the 1st week as there are no other weeks to consider. Equally, when running the Activity Plan ad hoc, if there are not 4 full weeks of published schedules, BTF will look to schedule the sessions in the 

The easiest way to work around this is for the first occurrence is to:

• Set the minimum time between sessions to 3 weeks
• For the 1st run/schedule/week, add a quarter of the attendees
• Add another quarter of attendees for each week until you have scheduled the first 4-week occurrence period

Following the 1st occurrence, the Activity Plan will manage itself.

2. Activity Planner will only interrupt other scheduled activities if you have the "is interruptable" checkbox selected in the Activity Code configuration

Hope this helps, please check out the post for the Activity Plans drop-in-clinic where I'll be providing live support for any Activity Plan challenges for more tips and advice.

Paul

Hi @Paul Wood 
We are hopeful to try using Activity Plans in our schedules but I have a few questions that I want to clarify ahead of time. 

1) We don't use scheduling periods - we release one week at a time. If we want to schedule all agents into a meeting over the course of one month (4 different schedules), is the tool smart enough to ensure that if Agent A was scheduled in week 1, not to schedule them again at all and to focus only on those who still need to attend a meeting that month? Or because we release one week at a time, will the Activity Plan schedule Agent A on week 1 and then possibly again on week 2, and 3, and 4? 

2) When we add activities to multiple agents in the live schedule, that feature drops the event on top of breaks, covering them up. We then need to go searching through the schedule to find where we need to re-add breaks/lunches. Will the activity planner do the same? Or will it schedule *around* breaks and lunches? 

Thanks for your help!

Hi Tom, 

Apologies for the delay, I've just returned from leave. 

This could be one of those challenges where the algorithm is looking at the problem mathematically rather than with human judgment. 
On the surface of things, to the human eye, scheduling Agent A on a Tuesday makes more sense. However, in the background, their skill mix and resulting impact on service predictions might take the service level below the threshold set within your Service Goal Impact configuration(s) (articles-service goal impacts overview), or there might be other non-interuptable activities scheduled on a Tuesday that prevent a session from being allocated.

I'd take a look at the Service Goal Impacts and refine them so that you can schedule more sessions Monday - Wednesday. These being busier days of the week, they might struggle to meet the lower permitted Service Goals. This could also help with the Agent A scenario.
Also, review any smaller Planning Groups to see if creating specific Service Goal Impacts for these will help.

Hi Paul, 

I did have a couple of follow up questions upon further testing.  Hope you can help with these also.  The process tends to skew towards scheduling most of the sessions on a Thursday or Friday.  While these days of the week are typically lower volume days it doesn't explain why large volumes of them don't get scheduled until the end of the week.  

A second issue we noticed is that sometimes, for example,  Agent A might have off Monday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday.  So logic would tell you that the system would try to find a time on Tuesday, when they are working, to schedule the training session.  Instead though, it might schedule Agent B who is here every day of the week on Tuesday instead of someone who only has the option of being scheduled on Tuesday.  Is there a way to force it to schedule the person on Tuesday who only has that day available to be scheduled instead?  It feels like since it is heavily scheduling people on Th and F, if you are not in one or both of those days, you might not get scheduled at all for that week.  

In the example below, in Week 1 the system scheduled the agent for their "Summit" training on Friday.  But in Week 2, she was not schedule at all on M-W (I think) because she is off Th and F and the system seems to prefer scheduling her on those days.  Any thoughts or ideas on this issue?  

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the info.  Doing some quick testing yesterday your suggestions seem to help produce some better results.  I think sometimes the wording or labeling of things can be a little vague so it leaves it open to interpretation.  For example, maximum number of sessions, I wasn't clear if that meant per day, per week etc and you clarified for me that it is total number of sessions period.  I appreciate your help and will let you know if I encounter any other issues.  Thanks!

Hi Tom, 

Your scenario should be possible with Activity Plans; there are a few things that we could check or tweak to help find sessions for everyone:

• Relax the maximum simultaneous sessions from 2
  • With this in place, you are saying that only 2 people can be scheduled for training at the same time. This is not always helpful, as in quieter periods of the day/week there might be enough over-staffing to schedule more sessions without impacting service level.
• Remove the Maximum Number of sessions (8)
  • This explicitly tells Activity Planner to schedule no more than 8 sessions for the period and group. In your scenario, after the 8th person has been scheduled, the Activity Plan we stop scheduling sessions.
• Remove the Session Availability constraints
  • Unless there is a reason for restricting the session availability, it is best to leave these blank and allow the service goal impacts to determine the best time for the sessions.
  • Session Availability is best used for scenarios like:
    • sessions must mirror room availability
    • sessions must mirror an external trainer/facilitator's availability

Changing these settings should help a lot with achieving your goal. 

If you are still finding that large numbers of attendees are not being scheduled. It might be worth revising your service goal impacts, either at the Business Unit level, Service Goal Template or Activity Plan Custom Settings.

After doing this, consider switching  "Favor scheduling all attendees" to "Favor service goal"

You can read more about these settings here:

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/service-goal-impacts-overview/

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/add-a-new-activity-plan/#tab4

Our team has tried exhaustively to make Activity Plans work for our team with very inconsistent results.  I don't know if we have an unrealistic expectations of what we are trying to do with it or if we are missing something obvious.  Here is the basic scenario we are trying to achieve with activity plans: schedule recurring activities.  

Case Scenario:

• Schedule a weekly 45 min training session for all of our on queue and off queue agents.
• The goal is to have it schedule the session on the best day/interval each week, on a recurring basis.  
• We schedule on a monthly basis that consists of 4 or 5 weeks in each scheduling period.
• In various tests and tweaks of the settings here are the shortcomings we see:
  • It does not consistently schedule each agent each week.  For example, several agents might be scheduled for Week 1 but not for Week 2 (or whatever week #).  
  • It often heavily skews to scheduling agents on Thurs or Friday which could possibly make sense as those tend to be lighter volume days however it also can be lighter staffing those days as more people request off.  

If anyone has been able to actually get this to work with scheduling people consistently please share how you are doing it and/or screen shots of the tabs on the activity plans so we can compare our settings.  

Attendees Tab is just the workgroups we selected, no facilitator, Service Goal Override set to "Favor scheduling all attendees". and Session availability is each WEEKDAY 9-530.  

Thanks!