Rotating Schedule Tips

TL;DR: Align the "Effective date" of the rotating schedule with the "First day of schedule week" in the Basic Properties of the Enterprise Model / Activity. Also, check the agent's schedule template effective date.

The most common reason for a scheduling mismatch is an offset start date. For the rotation to sync perfectly, the effective date of the rotating schedule must match the first day of your defined schedule week in the Enterprise Model.

• The rule: If your WFM system is configured for a Sunday–Saturday work week, your rotating schedule template's start date should also be a Sunday.

• Why it matters: Starting mid-week can cause the rotation to shift, leading to incorrect shift assignments for the entire duration of the schedule.

Schedule template effective date

While the rotating schedule effective date does not need to match the effective date in the schedule template, the system calculates the time difference between the two dates and converts the difference in weeks into rotation steps. For example, if your rotating schedule template has an effective date of 5/1/26, and you assign an agent to start on step 1, and their schedule template effective date is 5/8/26, their schedule will start on Step 2 because it goes forward 1 step due to the difference of a week. If there is a 2 week difference in effective dates, it advances 2 steps....etc. 

Confused?

Contact your support team for help setting up the rotating schedules.

In the set-up of the rotating schedule template, it's easy to confuse the number of steps in a rotation with the duration of those steps.

• The clarification: The Step length (in weeks) in Step 1: Basic properties refers to how many times a single step repeats before moving to the next one.

• The example: If you want a specific shift to repeat for two weeks before rotating, your step length is 2. It is not a count of how many total shifts/steps are in the rotation cycle. This is how many times you will repeat each step in the rotation, not how many steps there are. If you have four weeks of templates in Step 2: Rotation steps (3 of M-F then one with a weekend) and leave this number as 1, you will go through each step one time. If you change this number to 2, each step in the rotation would occur twice before moving to the next one (i.e., 6 weeks of no weekend shift then 2 weekends in a row).

After generating your working schedule, you can audit the steps and days of a rotating schedule to ensure the rotation is behaving as expected. You can verify these details using built-in reporting tools.

To review your assignments:

1. In the working schedule on the left-hand navigation pane, scroll down to and expand Utility Schedule Reports.

2. Select Effective schedule assignments.  The report opens in a new browser tab.
   

Interpreting the Report Results

Locate your specific schedule template to review two key data points:

• Initial Step: This column identifies which specific stage of the rotation the agent started with. Some agents may start at Stage 2 or later stage. 

• Rotation Eligibility (Floating Schedules): If you are using a floating template in your rotating schedule, this section will display the specific days the schedule is "eligible" to appear.

Note: If the "Eligible Days" column is blank for a floating schedule, refer to the Save requirement in the setup phase; the selections may not have been committed to the database.

Extra Credit

The Save Requirement for Floating Templates

When building a Floating Schedule template, the system requires an explicit Save command to lock in your selected rotation days.

• The issue: You can select all the necessary days, but if you navigate away from or proceed to the next screen without clicking the Save icon, the template will fail to generate.

• The fix: Always confirm your day selections by clicking Save before moving to the next step of the configuration.