Assign rotations to agents

Assign rotations to agents to schedule some of their shifts or days off according to a recurring pattern. The rotation pattern can be for one or several weeks. Usually, the rotation pattern only defines what to schedule for a few days of the period. The remaining days are scheduled flexibly.

The rotation periods have a start date but no end date. They are valid until the rotation period is deleted or until a new rotation period starts.

When you assign a rotation that extends over more than one week to the agents, you choose the start week for each agent. This means that different agents can be scheduled according to different weeks of the rotation pattern for the same calendar week.

Rotations are useful in many situations. These are some examples.

To schedule a few night shifts and a following day off in a recurring pattern.
To schedule a specific shift category in a recurring pattern, for example a shift with a non-skill activity.
To schedule agents to work for example every third weekend, and to each weekend ensure that a third of the agents are working.
To schedule days off in a recurring pattern.

To consider the rotations during scheduling and optimization of the schedule, the Rotations check box must be selected in the scheduling and optimization options.

Prerequisites

You have the People permission and the underlying permissions Add person and Can change and save.
The agent is added, basic information entered, and a person period and schedule period are defined. See Add or edit WFM agents manually, Manage WFM agent work rules, and Manage schedule periods.
A rotation is created.

Page location

Client > People > Rotations tab

Procedures

Assign a rotation to the agents

Create a rotation period to assign a rotation to the agents.

Select the agents to assign a rotation to.
Click New.
Enter a start date for the rotation period in the From field. The start date is usually on the day of the week that is the first day of the work week, to make it easier to follow up on the rotations.
Select which Rotation to use. To ensure that the selected rotation has the pattern you intended or verify the pattern for each week, right-click the name of the rotation and select LookUp.
Select a Start week for the rotation.

This defines what week of the rotation to start on the start date of the rotation period. If you for example select to start with week 2 of a 3-week pattern, the week that starts with the start date is schedule with the pattern of week 2 of the 3-week pattern. The following week is scheduled according to week 3, then week 1 and so on.
Click Save.

Delete a rotation period

Delete the rotation period if you no longer want to schedule this agent according to the rotation.

Select the agents to delete the rotation period for.
Click Delete.
Click Save.