WFM and NICE WFM Terminology Guide

NICE • Calabrio ONE

activity code • state

A code associated with agent actions.

Calabrio ONE: A state is a code from your ACD that indicates what agents are doing. Examples include logged on, in a call, ready, and more.

View and manage states in Options (WFM client).

activity code attribute • state group

NICE: The system uses activity code attributes in various views and reports to categorize and report the number of agents in events.

Calabrio ONE: A state group is a description for a group of raw ACD states that is easier to understand than the raw states. When you view or report on agent states, you are actually using the name of the group, not the raw state from your ACD.

Create state groups in Options (WFM client).

activity notes • notes

NICE: Activity notes are comments that are added to an activity.

Calabrio ONE: Notes are text details that can be added to an agent’s shift, not a specific activity, that provide additional information about the shift. There are two types of notes, internal notes and public notes.

Add notes to day view in MyTime > Schedule. Add notes to shifts in Schedules (WFM client). You can also add notes directly to users in People.

admin • WFM settings

Set and modify system settings.

Calabrio ONE: Set system-wide parameters for WFM.

Make various configurations to your system in WFM Settings or in Options (WFM client).

agent availability • hourly availability, overtime availability

Set the amount of time that agents can work.

NICE: Agent availability is the days and times at which an agent is or is not available to work.

Calabrio ONE: Hourly availability allows agents to enter when they are available to work. Overtime availability allows agents to enter when they are available to work extra hours.

Set hourly and overtime availability in MyTime.

agent hours • workflow control set

NICE: Agent hours are used in multi-week scheduling. Multi-week scheduling is a pre-schedule generation process. It allows you to designate a scheduling period length (up to 53 weeks) and the number of hours the system should schedule each agent during that scheduling period. You can manually enter the number of hours to schedule each week to meet the goal for each agent, or you can allocate hours using an automated planning feature called allocate agent hours.

Calabrio ONE: Workflow control sets are rules that define when agents can perform certain tasks and what rules and validations to apply for those tasks.

Create workflow control sets in Options (WFM client). Assign workflow control sets to agents in People.

Agent Webstation • MyTime

NICE: Agent Webstation/Supervisor Webstation is a space for agents or supervisors to view and edit schedules, edit settings, request schedule changes, and view notifications.

Calabrio ONE: MyTime is an employee empowerment tool where employees can view their schedules, make changes to their schedules, request time off, view their reports, and manage messages and settings. Requests can be automatically approved based on predefined rules or approved manually by your team leader or a resource planner.

View your schedule and much more in MyTime.

approval rules, time-off planning • workflow control sets, Grant the chatbot, personal accounts

NICE: Approval rules automatically approve or deny requests based on the conditions that are set. Time-off planning is used to create rules that determine the number of out-of-office activities for employees.

Calabrio ONE: Workflow control sets are the rules that apply to absences, overtime, and shift trades. Grant the chatbot and personal accounts offer related features.

Grant is an AI bot that checks for the possibility of overtime or voluntary time off and lets agents adjust their schedules if staffing allows. To let agents use Grant, enable the "Grant" MyTime function permission.

Personal accounts set the allowed number of absences (in days or hours) for individual agents. You can set the allowance for a specific period, and WFM counts the number of scheduled absences within this period, ensuring that planned absences stay within the allowance.

Create workflow control sets in Options (WFM client). Assign workflow control sets to agents in People. Manage personal accounts in People.

availability points • hourly availability

NICE: Availability points allow agents to input their availability at either a fifteen- or thirty-minute interval. Agents must accumulate a certain number of points before they are able to save their availability. If they do not have the required number of points, the availability may be sent through to a supervisor for approval. Points for each interval are determined by the WFM administrator.

Calabrio ONE: Hourly availability is similar in that it lets agents register when they are able to work. If an agent doesn’t register any availability, they are considered not available for scheduling.

Schedule hourly availability in MyTime.

campaign distributions • workload day templates

NICE: Campaign distributions are used to specify how to distribute the campaign contacts across the days in the campaign date range. Each day of the range receives the indicated percent of the total contacts allocated to that day. Use campaign distributions when you can predict unusual contact patterns.

Calabrio ONE: An estimation of how contacts and average handle time are likely to be spread out over each day of the week. The interval is defined by your organization.

View and create workload day templates in Forecasts.

contact type (CT) • activity, skill, workload

NICE: You can assign one queue to a CT so the CT forecast represents one queue, and you can assign several queues to a CT so the CT forecast represents the sum of several queues.

Define a queue as a unique CT if any of the following conditions apply:

• The queue has unique routing rules.

• The queue uses the same groups of agents as other queues, but under different conditions.

• The queue forecast objective differs from other queues.

• You want to see a forecast and the number of agents scheduled open for the queue.

• The queue requires a unique skill.

Calabrio ONE: Activities are the building blocks in the agents' shifts. These are skill-related tasks agents handle, for example phone, email, and chat, but also non-skill-related activities like administration, meetings, training, and breaks. Activities you create can be used for skills. Skill settings define for example which activity the forecast is connected to and the service level target.

When the skill is created, continue by creating workloads. A workload is a set of data that indicates the volume of calls, emails, or other work that is performed by agents and scheduled in WFM. Queues can be grouped in a workload if they share the same settings, such as open hours, and are handled by people with the same competencies, such as level two support or foreign language speakers.

Create activities in Options > Scheduling > Activity (WFM Client). Create skills in Forecasts > New skill (WFM Client). Create workloads in Forecasts (WFM Client).

NICE • Calabrio ONE

forecast • forecast

A prediction based on historical data of the number of contacts for every interval of the day that a contact center will receive over a specific period of time. Use forecasts to generate schedules.

View and create forecasts in Forecasts.

hours of operation • contract schedule, workload open hours

NICE: Set what hours and days your business is open and closed at the individual management unit level.

Calabrio ONE: The contract schedule is not related to the number of days the contact center is open, only to which days agents work. If the contact center is always closed on a specific day of the week, that day should be set as a non-workday in the contract schedule. You can also set open hours for each workload that defines when queues are open for calls.

Edit contract schedules in Options > Contract > Contract schedules (WFM client). Define open hours for a workload in Forecasts (WFM client).

integrations • WFM Integrations

Allows your system to integrate with select third-party systems.

Navigate to WFM Integrations in WFM settings.

NOTE   The WFM Integrations page is in early access and has limited availability.

limited positions, seat limits • max seats

NICE: Limited positions allow the user to specify that certain skills require specific positions in the contact center and there are a limited number of those positions. Seat limits set the minimum and maximum number of seats/positions that may be occupied at any time.

Calabrio ONE: Indicates how many seats (also known as work spaces) are available for agents at a specific site.

Configure max seats in Options (WFM client).

NICE • Calabrio ONE

role • role, function permissions, data permissions, global level of authorization

A set of permissions that control what users can do and what data they can access.

NICE: The NICE WFM application allows you to create roles with specific permissions and access rights, then assign those roles to system users. Alternatively, you can define permissions and access rights individually for a user account. After you create roles you can associate permissions to them, and then you can assign roles to employees.

Calabrio ONE: A role always consists of function permissions and data permissions. The function permissions define which functionality a user with the role can access. The data permissions define which data a user with the role can access.

Global level of authorization lets you control how much information is accessible to individual users by setting the global level of authorization for users' roles. For example, use the global level of authorization to limit an agent's access to only information about themselves or their team.

Create and manage roles, set function permissions, set data permissions, and set the global level of authorization in Permissions. Assign roles to users in People.

queue • queue

NICE: A queue is the primary source for collecting historical contact data for a WFM system. Most ACDs and multimedia servers provide detailed historical performance results (contacts handled, contacts abandoned, service level, and other data) for each queue. Typically you assign each queue to one contact type to generate a forecast using the historical queue data.

Calabrio ONE: In WFM, a queue is a collection of contacts. Queues are associated with workloads.

NICE • Calabrio ONE

schedule audit trail • audit trail

Allows you to see a record of changes made by users.

Calabrio ONE: Has a general audit trail and a scheduling audit trail report among other reports.

Run audit trail reports in Reports.

schedule history • schedule history

The ability to view previous versions of an agent's schedule.

NICE: Schedule history is managed via the schedule audit trail.

Calabrio ONE: Schedule history allows you to review all changes made to a selected agent. It shows the current and all previous versions of the schedule. You can see when the changes were made and who made them. You can also restore an older version of an agent's schedule.

View or restore schedule history in Schedules > Open Schedule (WFM client).

schedule manager view • Schedules

Generate, maintain, edit, and view agent schedules.

Configure schedules in Schedules (WFM client).

schedule optimizer • optimization

Maximizes coverage without running a new schedule.

NICE: Optimizes staffing after integrated schedules are published.

Calabrio ONE: Optimizes any current or future date with a schedule. Optimizing can move breaks and lunches but can also adjust days off, shift categories, shift lengths, activities, start times, and more. To control what the optimization process is allowed to change, you can lock certain things to prevent them from being optimized.

Optimize schedules in Schedules > Open Schedule (WFM client).

shift bidding • shift bidding

NICE: Managers create patterns of weekly shifts that agents can bid on. Managers use a template, generate shifts, and send it to agent webstation for agents to bid on.

Calabrio ONE: Create and configure the shift bid process in the Shift Bidding tool. Select the period when the bid process is open, select which agents are bidding, how to rank the agents, and what shift patterns they are bidding on. When the bid process is completed, the agents are scheduled according to the shift pattern which they were assigned according to the bid process.

Create, configure, and bid on shifts in Shift Bidding.

shrinkage level • shrinkage

Shrinkage is how much time is lost in the contact center due to unplanned activities such as absences.

NICE: Shrinkage level is a setting that affects staffing parameters. Shrinkage level lets you modify the staffing plan for the anticipated level of absences in your organization. The "Shrinkage %" field allows you to account for the amount of time for which paid agents are unproductive. The system applies shrinkage percent to the FTE requirement values when generating a forecast. Valid values are from 0.00 to 99.00. The value defaults to 0.00 for new long-term forecasts or to the value last used if you are regenerating an existing long-term forecast.

Calabrio ONE: Shrinkage includes a wide range of events that result in agents not being available to help customers during the agents' normal schedule such as an agent calling in sick. The shrinkage value is used to calculate the total number of agents needed to handle the forecasted volume. The calculation includes the number of agents required to cover for agents who are absent and agents who are scheduled on non-skill activities that are not yet planned when scheduling the agents. The shrinkage to use when generating forecasts is defined in the skill templates for each skill. It can be set on a day level or intraday level.

Establish shrinkage in Forecasts.

skill • skill, workload

NICE: Skills route contacts to a group of agents who can best meet the contact's needs. Each skill delivers contacts through one channel, such as voice or email.

Calabrio ONE: Skills route contacts to a group of agents who can best meet the contact's needs. Skills connect agents with workloads. A workload is a set of data that indicates the volume of calls, emails, or other work that is performed by agents and scheduled in WFM. Agents must be assigned skills in WFM in order to be scheduled.

Create and edit skills in Forecasts (WFM client). Assign skills to agents in People.

smart sync • import queue data

Import historical queue data to base a forecast on.

Import queue data in Forecasts.