Manage WFM agent work rules

Assign the work rules that apply to the agents on the Person periods tab in the People module. The work rules defined by person period are site and team, skills, external logon, contract, contract schedule, part-time percentage, shift bag and budget group. These work rules are the foundation to a correct schedule for the agents.

When you add a new agent and create the first person period, the start date is normally the first day of the agent’s employment. The person periods do not have any end dates. The last day of a person period is the day before a new person period starts. If there is not later period, the current person period is valid for the time being or until a leaving date is defined.

Create a new person period each time any parameter changes to keep the history. Click the plus sign next to an agent’s name to expand and view all person periods for that agent. This includes historical periods, the current period and any future periods.

To add a new person period for each change also makes it possible to enter any changes in advance.

EXAMPLE An agent moves to a new team starting next month. When that is decided, you can create a future person period with the start date defined as the 1st of next month.

When you work on a future period for multiple agents, select a date within that future period in the ribbon bar to ensure that you are viewing the correct person period for all the agents.

When you add a new agent manually, it is often helpful to copy information from an existing agent who works in a similar way. Open for example the team that the agent is planned to work in when you add the new agent. Copy relevant information from one of the other agents to the new agent.

Prerequisites

You have the People permission and the underlying permissions Add person and Can change and save.
A business hierarchy with sites and teams is defined.
Skills are created.
External logons are available through a ACD integration.
Contracts, contract schedules and part-time percentages are created to define the agents' work time.
A shift bag is created.
To approve absence requests based on budget allowance or use the Budgets module to create staffing budgets, a budget group must be created.
The agent is added, and basic information entered. See Add or edit WFM agents manually.

Page location

Client > People > Person periods tab

Procedures

Add a new person period

NOTE If the agent is assigned a new contract schedule or part-time percentage in the new person period, this doesn’t automatically update the personal account balance in relation to already planned future absences. The balance must be adjusted manually.

Select the agents to add a new person period for.
Click New.
Change the Date to the start date for the new period.
Select what Team the agent will belong to.
Select the Skills field for the agents and then go to the Skills tab to the right to select the Has check boxes for skills the agents have. The selected skills are listed in the Skills column.

If the agent has a skill but is currently not working on it, clear the Active check box for that skill.

If the agent is not fully up to speed on a skill, you can choose to enter a Proficiency percentage. The proficiency affects the calculation of scheduled hours for the agent for this skill.

NOTE You cannot use the proficiency value to distribute the agent's scheduled hours between skills. You must not use the proficiency for multi-skilled agents unless the proficiency percentage is the same for each skill assigned to the agent.
Connect external logons to the agents. External logons are used to connect statistics from external systems, such as CTIs, to the agents. The external logons are automatically populated from the external system every night.
1. Select the External logon field for an agent and then select the External logon tab to the right.
2. Select the check boxes for the external logons to connect to this agent. The selected external logons are listed in the External logon column.
  NOTE One agent can have several external logons, to connect data from different external systems to this agent. Several agents can share one external logon. Sharing an external logon is generally not recommended, because that makes it impossible to view statistics per agent.
Select a Contract, Contract schedule and a Part-time percentage for the agents.

The agent’s contract time target for each schedule period is calculated based on these three settings. See How work time is calculated for more information.
Select the Shift bag to select shifts from for the agent.
To approve the agent’s absence requests based on budget allowance, select a Budget group. To automatically load staff employed when creating staffing budgets, the agents must be connected to a budget group.

NOTE When you change the budget group for an agent, any previously scheduled absences are subtracted from the budget allowance of the new budget group, and the spot opens up again on the previous budget group.
Add a Note if needed.
Click Save.
If this is a new agent, continue to define a schedule period. See Manage schedule periods for more information.

Delete a person period

Delete a person period if it has been registered by mistake. Otherwise keep it.

Select a date within the person period to delete in the ribbon bar to show that person period.
Select the person period rows to delete.
Click Delete.
Click Save.