Administration
This section provides an overview of key features and processes within Workforce Management.
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This section provides an overview of key features and processes within Workforce Management.
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Was this helpful?
Creating a Schedule within Workforce Management can be understood as a three step process: Setup, Planning, and Refinement. Although these steps require additional sub-processes — like creating a Forecast or a Shift — as Scheduling Groups, Activities, and Shifts are developed within Workforce Management, the process is simplified over time due to the existing scheduling infrastructure.
To initiate scheduling in Workforce Management, the first step requires establishing the core scheduling infrastructure supporting the process. This includes creating Scheduling Groups, Activities, and Shifts that will be linked to Agents. Once these infrastructure elements are in place for a specific Scheduling Group, a scheduling administrator can proceed to the planning phase.
The planning phase determines the nature of a Schedule. At product launch, Scheduling administrators have two scheduling methods available:
Manual Scheduling: Create and customize a Schedule using Activities and Shifts.
Forecasting: A mechanized scheduling solution that uses Activities and Shift information to schedule agents according to forecasted engagement volume, but may require some manual adjustments.
After deciding the scheduling approach, and doing the necessary sub-processes (if applicable), the scheduling administrator can proceed to the refinement phase.
Forecasts are used to anticipate future contact center engagement volume and maintain sufficient staffing. Although a Forecast depends on the development of additional scheduling infrastructure — like Scheduling Groups — creating a Forecast can be understood in three phases: Initialization, Preview, and Publication.
During the initialization phase of a Forecast, the pre-existing infrastructure, particularly Scheduling Groups, is utilized. If a Scheduling Group is set up with at least one contact center queue and its associated agents, the remaining initial steps involve defining essential aspects of the Forecast. This includes assigning a name, specifying the starting date, setting the duration (up to four weeks), and determining the targeted metrics to be considered.
After previewing a Forecast’s call volume and staffing requirements, the final step is to finalize and publish the Forecast to the Schedule. This may involve a second pass of fine-tuning staffing levels to ensure sufficient coverage for projected engagement volume. Once staffing levels are confirmed, the forecasted-Schedule is ready for publication.
The following section outlines intraday agent and schedule management.
Throughout a workday, forecasted engagement volumes and actual agent staffing may not always align, requiring call center supervisors to make ad-hoc adjustments to Schedules and Activities. To handle these changes effectively, supervisors can perform intraday management within the Schedule, allowing them to dynamically add, remove, or replace scheduled activities, either in bulk or for individual agents, as needed.
From the published Schedule, supervisors can perform the following actions for Intraday management:
Edit Assigned Activity
Edit Activity Duration or Start/End Time
Review Net Staffing
Add Activities to an Individual
Add Activities in Bulk
The following sections outline different reports and data available within Workforce Management.
Similar to the Real-Time Adherence report, the Historical Adherence Report provides a summary of agent adherence performance for a specific timeframe, with up to 30 days in a single report.
When viewing a historical report with multiple days, the report will first display the user’s average adherence for the specified timeframe; however, supervisors can extend the user’s average report and review their adherence for each day.
The Schedule Activity Report provides a detailed summary of scheduled agent Activities for both past and future dates, visualizing how much time each Activity is allotted each day. Supervisors can filter the report by individual or multiple agents, specific Activities, and Scheduling Groups to help ensure proper staffing and maintain service levels. This report can also be exported into a CSV, facilitating collaboration and thorough examination of work schedules, and enabling better resource management and planning.
Administrators and supervisors can view an intraday report to compare a Schedule’s Forecast accuracy against a previous or current day’s engagement volume. This empowers supervisors to identify Forecast variances and make dynamic staffing decisions if a day’s engagement volume notably deviates from the Forecast.
Workforce Management admins and supervisors with sufficient permissions can access the audit log report containing a robust list of actions taken by admins, supervisors, and users within the product. Users with access to the audit logs can filter the logs by date or by specific actions taken. Logs included within the report include:
Cancel Agent Schedule Change Request
Cancel Time Off Request
Create Activity
Create Agent Schedule Change Request
Create Forecast
Create Queue
Create Scheduling Group
Create Shift
Create Time Off Request
Delete Activity
Delete Forecast
Delete Queue
Delete Scheduling Group
Delete Shift
Delete Unpublished Schedule
Duplicate Schedule
Change First Day of Week
Generate Scheduling
Inactive Schedule
Publish Schedule
Republish Schedule
Update Activity
Update Agent Schedule Change Request Status
Update Queue
Update Scheduling Group
Update Scheduling Group Agents
Update Scheduling Group Queues
Update Shift
Update Shift Agents
Update Status Mapping
Update Time Off Request Status
If authorized, Workforce Management agents can use the web portal to submit time off and schedule change requests, simplifying schedule management. Workforce Management admins and supervisors can approve and manage these requests from the web portal.
Zoom Workforce Management utilizes a per-set license model, each user that requires access to any features must be assigned a license for the product. For example, one supervisor and nine agents would require a total of 10 Workforce Management licenses.
Zoom Recommendation
Due to the varying levels of access within Workforce Management, custom roles are recommended. Caution and attention to detail are recommended when making custom user roles to ensure a continuity of experience and access across the Zoom platform.
Workforce Management provides three role-based permissions for different access levels within the product, and can be applied to a user role in any combination. The three permissions are:
Administrator: Enables users to administer your Zoom Workforce Management account.
Supervisor: Enables users to administer forecasting and scheduling.
Agent: Enables users to be scheduled in Zoom Workforce Management and view assigned schedules.
To update a role with the applicable permissions, perform the following steps:
Navigate to the Workforce Management subsection and define the role access as desired.
Repeat for any additional roles.
Workforce Management possesses the flexibility to customize the product's settings, allowing businesses to tailor the product to their unique needs and environment. These customizable settings are discussed in the following two sections.
Customizable general settings within Workforce Management include:
First Day of the Week: The starting day of your scheduling week determines the arrangement of days in a Schedule. For instance, if you set it to Monday, Saturday and Sunday will be grouped at the end of the week. Alternatively, setting it to Sunday will position Sunday at the beginning and Saturday at the end of the week.\
Schedule Time Threshold: The minimum percentage of time within a specific time interval that an agent must be scheduled for their presence to be counted. For example, if the threshold is set to 60%, an agent must be scheduled for 9 out of 15 minutes within a 15-minute interval to be accounted for.\
Target Adherence Percentage: The default target adherence percentage ranges used in adherence reporting. For example, if Good adherence ranges from 90-100%, Could be better may range from 80-89%, and Insufficient is anything below 80%.\
Daily Target Percentage Goal: The daily adherence target used in the Adherence dashboard. For example, if a call center aspires to an overall 90% schedule adherence across all agents for each day, this value should be set to 90%.
For example, an agent scheduled for a Phone Queue activity may demonstrate the statuses Ready and Occupied, signifying that they are ready for work, and are engaged in their work.
Conversely, an agent with the Break Activity may demonstrate the status Not Ready. This can be further refined with sub-statuses that reflect additional information, such as Meal, Forced, Coffee, or After call to provide additional details about their status.
Agent Requests
Within the Agent Requests preferences tab, account admins or supervisors can define default criteria and settings for agent-initiated requests like a schedule change or out-of-office request. Within this menu, the following settings are editable:
Out-of-Office Requests
Default Daily Duration
Partial-Day Request Enablement
Minimum Time-Off Duration
Default Increment Selection
Schedules
Allow agents to view other agents schedules
Schedule Activity View
Simple - Displays scheduled time without Activity details
Detailed - Displays scheduled time with Activity details
Schedule Change Requests
Allow agents to request changes to their schedule
Default increment selection
Editable Activities by agent
Add / Change / Delete Activity
Notifications
Within the Notifications tab, Workforce Management admins and supervisors can set up notification delivery method preferences within the product, such as delivering notifications directly to a user’s Activity Center within the Zoom Workplace app or through email. Within this menu, the following settings are editable:
Dynamic Schedule Generated
Admin, Supervisor
Forecast Generated
Admin, Supervisor
Dynamic Schedule Generated
Supervisor
Out of Office Request Updated
Agent
Schedule Activity Upcoming
Agent
Schedule Activity Updated
Agent
Schedule Change Request Submitted
Supersivor
The refinement stage involves fine-tuning a Schedule or Forecast to ensure adequate activity and Shift coverage. For manual scheduling, this entails confirming your scheduled coverage meets your expected demand. For Forecasts, this entails ensuring that there is for the anticipated engagement volume.
Following the initialization of a Forecast, the preview stage offers a comprehensive summary of projected call volume and expected staffing requirements. This includes the anticipated volume for each 15-minute interval and the average duration of call handling (i.e., talking + hold time + after-call work). If necessary, scheduling administrators can or the Forecast to account for any anticipated changes in volume that are not otherwise represented through historical data. After confirming the Forecasted volume, scheduling administrators can generate recommended staffing for the Forecast.
This report was previously discussed in the .
In addition to a Workforce Management license, users must have an appropriate user role with their intended role-based permissions to access the application. For example, agents must belong to a user role with the WFM Agent permission. If necessary, an account admin or authorized user can to grant users access.
As a Zoom account owner or admin authorized to edit roles, navigate to the page on the web portal.Click the pencil icon to the right of the role you are editing.
Although are the various tasks or responsibilities an agent performs throughout their Shift, Activities require statuses to reflect an agent’s general availability for adherence and reporting purposes. Within Workforce Management, an account admin can customize Activities with multiple statuses and/or sub-statuses through the Agent Status Mapping menu to more accurately reflect an agent’s availability.
