AGENT PREFERENCES

Agent Preferences

Agent Preferences lets you describe the dates and times that Agents would prefer to work

When comparing an Agent's Preferences againts an an Agent's Availabiliy their Preferences will be for a narrower period of time then their Availability.

It should be noted that its not necessary to enter preferences as availabilty is the main driver of the rostering system.

For example.

I'm available from 9am to 5pm week days but I prefer to only work mornings between 9am and 12pm.

In the above example you would create an week day availability of 9am to 5pm and a week day preference of 9am to 12pm.

Base Scheduling

Scheduling takes the tedium out of setting up an Agent's Preferences. Rather than recording each individual day that the agent prefers to work, a schedule lets you set up a recurring pattern of their preferences.

For example:

I prefer to work every wednesday from 9am to 5p from now until June 30 and after which I will prefer to work wednesdays and thursdays from 10am to 6pm.

This would require you to set up two Base Schedules, one that describes their preference from now until June 30 and then a second schedule that starts on 1st July.

For simple schedule patterns you should:

Set the start and end time for their prefered shift times.

Set  'Repeats Every' to '1'

Set Period to 'DAY'

Set the start and end dates during which this schedule describes the Agent's prefernces.

Select the days of the Week that the agent prefers to work.

For more complex patterns please see the online WFM documentation that describes using 'Repeats Every' and 'Period' to describes more complex patterns of availability.

Exceptions

Occasionaly you will have set up a standard Base Schedule for an Agent but they may want to vary their preferred shift times for a short period of time (such as taking a single day off).

Exeptions provide an easy method to 'block out' a period when the agent prefers to not be available.

For example:

You have a base schedule of:

From the 1st of June until the 1st of December I prefer 9am - 5pm weekdays, except that on the 4th of September would prefer not to work.

An exception makes this easy to setup. 

Simply add an exception that starts on the 4th of September and ends of the 11th of September with a start time of 9am and an end time of 5pm and then select each day of the week. The agent nolonger shows as having a preference to be rostered during that week.