Agent Templates

Agent Templates lets you describe the dates and times that an Agent is normally rostered on.

Agent Templates are critical when using Forecasting and the Auto Fill mechanism as the Auto Fill uses Agent Templates to fill out the roster and allocate shifts to staff.

As well as creating Agent Templates from this screen you can also create a Template directly from the Visual Roster by right clicking on an allocated shift and clicking Create Template.

Teams

When creating an Agent Template you create the Template against a specific Team. The Auto Fill mechanism will then allocate the agent to the roster when the Auto Fill is run for the Agents Team.

In some cases an Agent may belong to multiple teams. In this case you will need to create at least one Agent Template for each team that the Agent belongs to. Of course you need to be careful not to roster the agent for two teams at the same time.

Priority

The Auto Fill mechanism uses Agent Templates as a template when laying out a roster. In some cases the required no. of shifts may be less than normal and therefore some Agents will not get a shift even though they have an Agent Template for that roster period.

The Auto Fill mechanism uses the 'Priority' to decide which Agents get a shift. Agents with a 'lower priority' will be allocated a shift before Agents with a higher priority.

Essentially give you good team members a low priority value and your poor team members a higher value.

Set Shift

Set Shifts are a method of guarenteeing an Agent a shift of a specific duration regardless of any other considerations.

Set Shifts are automatically allocation before anyone else (regardless of priority) and are allocated even if there is no requirement. In some cases the Auto Fill may shorten a shift, however 'Set Shifts' are never shortened.

Base Scheduling

Scheduling takes the tedium out of setting up an Agent's Templates. Rather than recording each individual day that the agent is allocated a shift, a schedule lets you set up a recurring pattern of shifts.

For example:

The agent is given a shift every wednesday from 9am to 5pm, from now until June 30 and then after that is given a shift every wednesdays and thursdays from 10am to 6pm.

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

A simple schedule

For simple schedule patterns you should:

Set the start and end time that they are allocated a shift.

Set 'Repeats Every' to '1'

Set Period to 'DAY'

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

Select the days of the Week that the agent is given a shift.

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

Exceptions

Occasionaly you will have set up a standard Base Schedule for an Agent, but they may want to vary their shifts 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 won't be given a shift.

Exception example:

You have a base schedule of:

From the 1st of June until the 1st of December the agent is given a shift from 9am - 5pm weekdays, except that on the 4th of September they are taking a weeks leave.

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 is nolonger given a shift during their week of leave.