Create activities

Create activities to use as building blocks in the agents' shifts. This is the skill-related tasks that agents handle, for example phone, email and chat, but also non-skill-related activities like administration, meetings, training and breaks.

NOTE   Absences are created separately to handle the situations when agents are not working, for example because they are ill or on leave.

Prerequisites

  • You have the Options permission.

Page location

Client > Options > Scheduling > Activity

Procedures

Create activities

Create all activities to use in agents' shifts.

  1. Click Add activity. A new row is added in the activity table.
  2. Enter a Name for the new activity.
  3. Select a Color. The activity color is shown where the shift is displayed with details.

  4. Select the appropriate check boxes for this activity.

    • Is contract time—Select this check box if the activity counts towards an agent's contracted time to work for a schedule period. The contract time is used as a target when scheduling. Often, all activities are contract time except for lunch.

    • Is work time—Select this check box if the activity is a work-related task. The work time is used for contract validations, for example nightly rest, weekly rest and maximum weekly work time.

      NOTE   When scheduling overtime, only activities which are set as work time are included when calculating the number of overtime hours.

    • Is paid time—Select this check box if the activity is a paid activity. The paid time is mainly used for reporting.
    • Requires skill—Select this check box to make it possible to connect this activity to one or more skills. An activity that requires skill is only scheduled on agents that have this skill, only within the skill's open hours and when there is a forecasted resource need for the skill.
    • Requires seat—Select this check box if the agent requires a seat (workstation) to perform this activity. This is useful if you are using a limitation on number of seats when scheduling to ensure you don't schedule more agents than you have seats.
    • In ready time—Select this check box if the agent during this activity is logged in on the ACD platform and is working to handle contacts like calls, emails and chats.

    • Overwritable—Select this check box if other activities, meetings and personal activities can be placed on top of this activity. This setting applies to automatic scheduling and gives a warning if you manually schedule an activity on top of a non-overwritable activity.

      EXAMPLE   Clear this check box for the lunch activity to ensure that meetings are not scheduled during an agent's lunch.

  5. Set Report as to Lunch or Short break for any break activities.

    This can be used to report on when agents have their breaks and lunches using the Shifts per day PDF report in Schedules. The Report as setting is also used to define the lunch activity when validating overtime requests, and to define lunches and short breaks when using self-scheduling.

  6. Enter the Payroll system code for the activity.

    This is used in payroll exports to define the compensation. If there is no need to follow up on the different activities in the payroll export, you can use the same payroll system code for all paid activities.

  7. Click Apply to save.

    The Updated by and Updated on fields are updated automatically when you save to show who did the last change and when it was made.

Delete activity

Delete activities that no longer are in use.

IMPORTANT   Do not delete activities that are still in use. Rename the activity to indicate that it shouldn't be used, but keep it to not affect the history.

  1. Select the activity you want to delete by clicking the row in the table.
  2. Click Delete.
  3. Click Yes to the confirmation question.
  4. Click Apply to save.

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