Manage vacation planning

IMPORTANT   Vacation planning is an add-on app. This is a new feature that is not yet generally available. If you would like early access to this feature, contact your Calabrio Account Manager.

You can use the Vacation planning tool to manage, automate, and streamline your vacation processes, while making them fair and unbiased. After you create a vacation planning process, there are the following process statuses:

• Upcoming – active but in the future

• Ongoing - currently in an open period

• Closed – vacation period has closed but the distribution has not been run

• Finalized – distribution is complete

You can also use the vacation change features, which allows agents to change to a preferred period of vacation, but keep the existing vacation in their schedule until the new period is approved.

Prerequisites

You have the Web > Vacation planning > Manage access permission.

Page location

WFM > Vacation planning

WFM > Vacation planning > Vacation change

Procedures

Create a new vacation planning process

1. On the Vacation planning page, click New Process and, in the Settings tab, fill in the following information:

   1. Name

   2. Absence type

   3. Open period - the date range when agents can submit their bid.

   4. Vacation period

   5. Bid block limitation (0 = No limit) - You can limit the amount of vacation preference blocks available to the agent. For example, if you enter 2 in this field, the agent can only enter two preference blocks when submitting their vacation requests.

   6. Allow calendar weeks only - The agents cannot select individual days or periods that start in the middle of a week.

   7. Ranking criteria - You can define the ranking order in terms of who has the highest priority when granting vacation preferences. The start date is available by default but you must use optional columns to create additional ranking criteria. You can sort the ranking according to Ascending or Descending employment numbers. For example, in company X, employment number 1 might be the most senior employee but in company Y, employment number 1 might be the most junior employee. You can sort the ranking accordingly.

2. Click Save.

3. (Optional) To delete a vacation process, click Delete process and then click OK.

4. In the Agents tab, click Add agents.

5. In the Add agents window, select a date, select sites or teams, select group pages, and then click Fetch agents.

6. To add all of the agents, click Add all and then click Add. Alternatively, if you want to add selected agents, select the agents and click Add selected and then click Add.

7. To remove all agents, click Remove all agents and then click Remove. Alternatively, if you want to remove selected agents, select the agents, click Remove selected agents, and then click Remove.

8. To manage how many people can take vacation on each day in a vacation period, in the Allowance tab, select a date range and then enter the allowances in one of the following ways:

   1. Enter the allowances individually.

   2. Enter an allowance in the first field and then click Apply to below to apply it to the rest of the fields.

   3. Click Copy current values to clipboard, paste and edit the values in a spreadsheet, and then copy the new values and in the Allowance tab, click Paste values from clipboard.

   NOTE   You can also navigate to the Allowance tab by clicking Allowance on the Vacation planning landing page.

9. Click Save. To discard changes, click Discard changes.

10. To activate the process, click Activate. To deactivate the process, click Deactivate. When the process is activated, agents can submit their vacation preferences during the date range that you configured for the open period.

11. To view the status of the vacation planning process, click Progress. For example, you can check if agents submitted their vacation requests by viewing the Submitted column.

    NOTE   You can also navigate to the Progress tab by clicking Progress on the Vacation planning landing page.

12. After agents submit their preferences and the open period has passed, run the distribution to allocate vacation to the agents. To do this, on the Progress tab, click Run distribution and then click OK.

Manage an existing vacation planning process

1. Click Vacation planning.

2. Click the All, Inactive, Active, or Finalized tab.

3. Click an existing vacation planning process that has an Active or Inactive status and then click the Settings, Agent, or Allowance tab.

4. In the Settings tab, edit the following information:

   1. Name

   2. Absence type

   3. Open period - the date range when agents can submit their bid.

   4. Vacation period

   5. Bid block limitation (0 = No limit) - You can limit the amount of vacation preference blocks available to the agent. For example, if you enter 2 in this field, the agent can only enter two preference blocks when submitting their vacation requests.

   6. Allow calendar weeks only - The agents cannot select individual days or periods that start in the middle of a week.

   7. Ranking criteria - You can define the ranking order in terms of who has the highest priority when granting vacation preferences. The start date is available by default but you must use optional columns to create additional ranking criteria. You can sort the ranking according to Ascending or Descending employment numbers. For example, in company X, employment number 1 might be the most senior employee but in company Y, employment number 1 might be the most junior employee. You can sort the ranking accordingly.

5. Click Save.

6. (Optional) To delete a vacation process, click Delete process and then click OK.

7. In the Agents tab, click Add agents.

8. In the Add agents window, select a date, select sites or teams, select group pages, and then click Fetch agents.

9. To add all of the agents, click Add all and then click Add. Alternatively, if you want to add selected agents, select the agents and click Add selected and then click Add.

10. To remove all agents, click Remove all agents and then click Remove. Alternatively, if you want to remove selected agents, select the agents, click Remove selected agents, and then click Remove.

11. To manage how many people can take vacation on each day in a vacation period, in the Allowance tab, select a date range and then enter the allowances in one of the following ways:

    1. Enter the allowances individually.

    2. Enter an allowance in the first field and then click Apply to below to apply it to the rest of the fields.

    3. Click Copy current values to clipboard, paste and edit the values in a spreadsheet, and then copy the new values and in the Allowance tab, click Paste values from clipboard.

    NOTE   You can also navigate to the Allowance tab by clicking Allowance on the Vacation planning landing page.

12. Click Save. To discard changes, click Discard changes.

13. To activate the process, click Activate. To deactivate the process, click Deactivate. When the process is activated, agents can submit their vacation preferences during the date range that you configured for the open period.

14. To view the status of the vacation planning process, click Progress. For example, you can check if agents submitted their vacation requests by viewing the Submitted column.

    NOTE   You can also navigate to the Progress tab by clicking Progress on the Vacation planning landing page.

15. After agents submit their preferences and the open period has passed, run the distribution to allocate vacation to the agents. To do this, on the Progress tab, click Run distribution and then click OK.

Create another round of a vacation planning process

When you create a new round, it uses the values from the original vacation planning process to create a new round, so that you do not have to create a new vacation planning process from scratch. It creates an open period for the same agents to submit another round of requests and uses the remaining allowance from the previous round.

1. Click Create next round.

2. Ensure that you change the open period date range for this next round.

View the results of the vacation distribution

1. On the Vacation planning landing page or after you click a finalized vacation planning process, click Allowance result to view the initial allowance, awarded allowance, and remaining allowance for each agent.

2. On the Vacation planning landing page or after you click a finalized vacation planning process, click Result to view the awarded choices and award status for each agent. Click Export to CSV to export the results to a spreadsheet.

Create a vacation change process

Use the vacation change feature to allow agents to change to a preferred period of vacation, but keep their existing vacation in their schedule until the new period is approved.

1. On the Vacation planning page, click Vacation change.

2. Click New Process and, in the Settings tab, fill in the following information:

   NOTE   You can also start the vacation change process by clicking Start vacation change process for an existing vacation process on the Vacation planning page.

   1. Name

   2. Absence type

   3. Open period

   4. Vacation period

   5. Click Off, Daily, or Weekly for Automatically run and select a date range during which the process will run.

      1. Off - You can manually run the vacation change process.

      2. Daily - The vacation change process will run automatically every day.

      3. Weekly - The vacation change process will run automatically every week.

   6. Allow calendar weeks only - The agents cannot select individual days or periods that start in the middle of a week.

   7. Expiration threshold - You can request a vacation change up to X amount of days in advance of both the vacation that you were previously allocated and the vacation change that you are asking for.

   8. Minimum selection days (0 = No limit) - The minimum amount of vacation days that the agent must use in a period.

   9. Ranking criteria - You can define the ranking order in terms of who has the highest priority when granting vacation preferences. The start date is available by default but you must use optional columns to create additional ranking criteria. You can sort the ranking according to Ascending or Descending employment numbers. For example, in company X, employment number 1 might be the most senior employee but in company Y, employment number 1 might be the most junior employee. You can sort the ranking accordingly.

   10. Select First come first serve and/or Rank from the Processing rules drop-down list and select a date for each option that you choose. You must submit your vacation change request before the selected date to be included in the corresponding rule process.

3. Click Save.

4. (Optional) To delete a vacation process, click Delete process and then click OK.

5. In the Agents tab, click Add agents.

6. In the Add agents window, select a date, select sites or teams, select group pages, and then click Fetch agents.

7. To add all of the agents, click Add all and then click Add. Alternatively, if you want to add selected agents, select the agents and click Add selected and then click Add.

8. To remove all agents, click Remove all agents and then click Remove. Alternatively, if you want to remove selected agents, select the agents, click Remove selected agents, and then click Remove.

9. To manage how many people can take vacation on each day in a vacation period, in the Allowance tab, select a date range and then enter the allowances in one of the following ways:

   1. Enter the allowances individually.

   2. Enter an allowance in the first field and then click Apply to below to apply it to the rest of the fields.

   3. Click Copy current values to clipboard, paste and edit the values in a spreadsheet, and then copy the new values and, in the Allowance tab, click Paste values from clipboard.

   NOTE   You can also navigate to the Allowance tab by clicking Allowance on the Vacation change landing page.

10. Click Save. To discard changes, click Discard changes.

11. To activate the process, click Activate. To deactivate the process, click Deactivate. When the process is activated, agents can submit their vacation change requests during the date range that you configured for the open period.

12. To view the status of the vacation change process, click Progress. For example, you can check if agents submitted their vacation change requests by viewing the Submitted column.

    NOTE   You can also navigate to the Progress tab by clicking Progress on the Vacation change landing page.

13. After agents submit their vacation change requests and the open period has passed, run the distribution to re-allocate vacation to the agents. To do this, on the Progress tab, click Process waitlist and then click OK.

NOTE   To view an existing vacation change process, you can also navigate from the Vacation planning page by clicking Waitlist.

Manage an existing vacation change process

1. On the Vacation change tab, click the All, Inactive, Active, or Finalized tab.

2. Click an existing vacation change process that has an Active or Inactive status and then click the Settings, Agent, or Allowance tab.

3. In the Settings tab, edit the information, where necessary. For more information about the fields, see Create a vacation change process.

4. Click Save.

5. (Optional) To delete a vacation change process, click Delete process and then click OK.

6. In the Agents tab, click Add agents.

7. In the Add agents window, select a date, select sites or teams, select group pages, and then click Fetch agents.

8. To add all of the agents, click Add all and then click Add. Alternatively, if you want to add selected agents, select the agents and click Add selected and then click Add.

9. To remove all agents, click Remove all agents and then click Remove. Alternatively, if you want to remove selected agents, select the agents, click Remove selected agents, and then click Remove.

10. To manage how many people can take vacation on each day in a vacation period, in the Allowance tab, select a date range and then enter the allowances in one of the following ways:

    1. Enter the allowances individually.

    2. Enter an allowance in the first field and then click Apply to below to apply it to the rest of the fields.

    3. Click Copy current values to clipboard, paste and edit the values in a spreadsheet, and then copy the new values and in the Allowance tab, click Paste values from clipboard.

    NOTE   You can also navigate to the Allowance tab by clicking Allowance on the Vacation change landing page.

11. Click Save. To discard changes, click Discard changes.

12. To activate the process, click Activate. To deactivate the process, click Deactivate. When the process is activated, agents can submit their vacation change requests during the date range that you configured for the open period.

13. To view the status of the vacation change process, click Progress. For example, you can check if agents submitted their vacation change requests by viewing the Submitted column.

    NOTE   You can also navigate to the Progress tab by clicking Progress on the Vacation change landing page.

14. After agents submit their vacation change requests and the open period has passed, run the distribution to re-allocate vacation to the agents. To do this, on the Progress tab, click Process waitlist and then click OK.

Related topics

• Assign rotations to agents

• Import new employees for WFM