BPO exchange file formats

Use the BPO Exchange functionality when an external supplier handles part of your workload. Export the gap between the forecasted agents and the internally scheduled agents to a file to send to an external supplier (a BPO). When the BPO has scheduled according to your resource need, you can import their external staffing for you to get a good overview of the staffing situation.

This section describes the file formats for the export file and the import file.

Export file format

The BPO Exchange export file format is the same format as used in the forecast import. The times in the export file are in your time zone, that is in the time zone of the user who is doing the export.

Export file columns

Column	Format	Description
skillname	string 50	The name of the skill to export the gap for
startdatetime	yyyyMMdd HH:mm	The date and the time for the start of the interval.
enddatetime	yyyyMMdd HH:mm	The date and the time for the end of the interval.
tasks	integer	Included to be compatible with the forecast import. Always zero in the export.
tasktime	seconds decimal	Included to be compatible with the forecast import. Always zero in the export.
aftertasktime	seconds decimal	Included to be compatible with the forecast import. Always zero in the export.
agents	decimal	The number of agents needed to cover the gap between forecasted and scheduled agents.

Import file format

There are a number of requirements that the staffing import file must fulfill for the import to be successful.

• The dates included in the import file must have a forecast for the skill or skill combination.
• The intervals included in the import must be within the skill open hours.
• The times in the export file must be in your time zone, that is in the time zone of the user who is doing the import.
• The file encoding must be UTF-8.
• The file must contain all the columns listed below.

Import file columns

Column	Format	Description
source	string 100	The name of the BPO. This is required to handle imports from different BPOs separately.
skillcombination	string	The skill or combination of skills. If the agents have more than one skill, use | to separate the skills. See the example below.
startdatetime	yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm or yyyyMMdd HH:mm	The date and the time for the start of the interval.
enddatetime	yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm or yyyyMMdd HH:mm	The date and the time for the end of the interval.
agents	decimal	Number of agents scheduled at the BPO for this interval.

Related topics

• Export staffing gap
• Import staffing from external suppliers