Scheduling with preferences

After assigning work patterns to employees, the scheduling engine can rearrange the schedule to take preferences into account. This is only done if service levels are not impacted by preference considerations.

To create an optimal schedule, the scheduling engine schedules for the forecasted call volume while meeting the service goals Goals in WFM that allow determining how quickly work should be handled, including service level, Average Speed to Answer (ASA), and deadline goals. as closely as possible. This part takes into account employee unavailability, proficiency, skills, and employee min/max hours, but does not include preferences.

After service goals are met, the scheduling engine takes into account preferred start times, or days off and preferred work patterns.

Scheduling engine schedules according to work patterns

Employees are scheduled for one work pattern Set of shifts in WFM (usually a weekly set of shifts) that are assigned to employees. A work pattern typically includes one or more shifts and possible days off for one week. only out of the group of work patterns they have been assigned.

Based on this work pattern, and taking into consideration other factors, such as availability, the employee is assigned days off and start times. Preferences are not taken into account at this point.

Based on this initial step, schedules might look like this for patterns with single start times:

Employee	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
Employee 1	7 am	7 am	7 am	7 am		7 am
Employee 2	8 am	8 am	8 am		8 am		8 am
Employee 3		6 am	6 am		6 am	6 am	6 am

How the scheduling engine uses preferences

Next, the scheduling engine rearranges the schedules or "swap" to give the more senior or higher-ranked employees their preferred work pattern, start time, or day off.

Start-time and day-off preferences are always given priority by the scheduler over work-pattern preferences if both are used.

Any swaps must not impact the service levels generated by the initial schedule. Swaps can only happen if a work pattern, start time, or day off is already on the schedule. The scheduling engine does not schedule work patterns, days off, or start times simply to provide individual employees with their preferences.

For example, all three employees preferred to work the late work pattern. But, since that work pattern was not scheduled, no employee can receive his or her preferences. In another example, all three employees preferred to start at 9 am, but a 9 am start time is not available, and therefore, no employee—regardless of seniority or ranking Rating of a specific interaction in the search results in Speech Analytics, which is determined by the number of instances of the search term within the interaction, and the interaction’s individual score.—will be assigned it.

The scheduling engine now starts with the most senior employee and looks at the rest of the employees and sees if there is a work pattern, start time, or day off that has been assigned that is preferred by the more senior employee. If one is found, the engine does a swap.

Example: How the scheduling engine assigns preferences

This is a final schedule after taking preferences into account:

Employee	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
Employee 1	8am	8am	8am		8am		8am
Employee 2	7am	7am	7am	7am		7am
Employee 3		6am	6am		6am	6am	6am

The scheduling engine went through the following process in order to assign this schedule:

Employee 1’s top preference is an 8:00 AM start time.
According to the original schedule:
- Employee 1 starts at 7:00 AM
- Employee 2 starts at 8:00 AM
Employee 1 is more senior than Employee 2. Therefore, the scheduling engine swaps the two shifts and gives Employee 1 the 8:00 AM start time.
The days off for Employee 1 and Employee 2 were switched as well. Employee 1 is now off on Thursday and Saturday, instead of Friday and Sunday.
This is only done if Employee 1’s day-off preferences match this new schedule or are less important than his start-time preferences.