Review staffing levels

Use the Staffing tool to review the staffing levels for a skill or skill group. The staffing levels are shown for published schedules for today, 7 weeks forward and 7 days back. The staffing information can be exported to an Excel file for further reporting.

The staffing view is immediately updated by any changes to the forecast and by schedule changes made in the web scheduling tools or through agent requests. Changes made in the Schedules module in the WFM client are visible in the staffing view within an hour.

NOTE   The staffing view always shows a full business day based on the skill time zone. For example, if a skill is configured for time zone UTC -6 and is open from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, the staffing displays 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM when time zone UTC -6 is selected in the web schedule view. However, if the time zone view is changed to UTC +0, the staffing displays 2:00 PM to midnight.

Prerequisites

  • You have the Staffing permission.
  • You have the Extra hours and Post/edit extra hours permissions.

Page location

WFM > Staffing

Procedures

Select skills

Click one of the fields at the top to select an individual skill or a skill group.

Review staffing levels

The number of Forecasted agents and Scheduled agents are shown as lines in the staffing chart. The deviation between the forecasted and scheduled agents, that is the Understaffing or the Overstaffing, is shown as a bar for each interval.

Select the Use shrinkage check box to display the Forecasted agents value that takes shrinkage into consideration. Shrinkage is normally used for future periods, where there are more uncertainties regarding, for example, the amount of absences.

An applied reforecasted agents measure is represented by a gray bar. This bar represents a manually adjusted forecast applied to today’s forecast data for future intervals. It is derived from the values of Forecasted agents and calculated as: Applied reforecasted agents = (Percentage applied × Forecasted agents) + Forecasted agents. The Applied reforecasted agents measure is only available for telephony and chat skills. Applied reforecasted agents does not take shrinkage into account.

Hover a measure in the legend to highlight it. It is also possible to click a measure in the legend to hide it. This makes it easier to focus on the measures that are important to you. Click the measure again to show it.

NOTE   The staffing value shown in the Staffing tool does not take agents' proficiency values into consideration.

Select which day to view

Use the arrows to go to the day before or the day after.

Use the calendar view to select a specific date.

Post extra hours

The extra hours feature allows you to post additional working hours that agents can voluntarily pick up. When an agent picks up a slot, the picked-up hours are added to their schedule as a regular activity. You can control when extra hours are available and tailor-extra hour slots by skill. Extra hours automatically account for your contract rules, including maximum work time and required nightly rest. The feature is designed to provide greater flexibility for both planners and agents while helping organizations respond more effectively to changing demand and staffing situations.

NOTE   You can only post extra hours to individual skills, not skill groups. Agents only see available extra hours for skills assigned to them. 

  1. Select a skill.

  2. Click Extra hours.

  3. Click the plus icon to add slots for agents to pick up extra hours.

  4. Enter details in the following fields:

    • Start time

    • End time

    • Offered slots

      The Picked up slots field displays the number of agents who have picked up the slot. It is automatically populated and cannot be edited.

  5. Click Save.

    NOTE   

    • If you want to discard the slot, click Close instead of saving your changes. If you have already saved your changes and want to delete the slot, click the trash can icon. After an agent has picked up a slot, you cannot modify the hours you posted or delete the slot. However, you can still increase or decrease the number of available slots.
    • When agents pick up extra hours, they must take the entire slot; they cannot pick up only part of it. We recommend posting hours in smaller intervals, such as 30-minute or 1-hour slots, to give agents more flexibility. You can post overlapping slots. For example, you can post one slot from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM and another from 8:30 AM to 10:00 AM.
    • Because of dynamic resource allocation, if an agent is multi-skilled across skills connected to the same activity, the system distributes them as a resource across all of those skills. This applies even if they picked up hours for a single skill.

Reuse extra hour slot pattern

Copy an existing extra hour slot and apply the same pattern to a different skill and date range. This feature helps you quickly reuse predefined scheduling configurations without manually recreating each slot, ensuring consistency and saving time when planning extra hours across teams or periods.

  1. Select a check box for a slot.

  2. Click Copy extra hours.

  3. In the Copy extra hours window, select a skill.

  4. Select a date range.

  5. Click Paste extra hours.

  6. Click X to close the window.

Export extra hours

Export extra hours data for a specified date range. You can export the data per skill and date range. The exported file shows the number of minutes posted.

  1. Select the skill you want to export extra hours data for.

  2. Click Export extra hours icon.

  3. Select the date range.

  4. Click Export to download an Excel file with the extra hours data for the selected period.

Export staffing data to an Excel file

Export staffing data for a selected period to an Excel file. Staffing data is available from 7 days back and 7 weeks forward, counting from today.

NOTE   
  • The date format in the export is based on your culture settings.
  • The Total scheduled agents measure shows the number of FTEs that are scheduled on this skill. The Total scheduled heads measure is the number of physical agents scheduled on this skill.

  1. Select the skill you want to export staffing data for.

    The Excel export function is only available for individual skills, not for skill groups.

  2. Click Export to file icon.
  3. Select the date interval.
  4. Click Export to download a file with the staffing data for the selected period.

View imported BPO files

If you are using BPO Exchange and have imported staffing files, information about the files that have been imported successfully for the selected day and skill is shown below the chart.

Hover the cursor over the file name for detailed information about the date and time of the import and which user that performed the import.

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