Overview

The schedule partitions feature allows you to offer agents designated shifts from a working schedule during a selection window, giving them the freedom to select their preferred work schedules. 

A few notes:

• Completing the schedule partition publishes the schedule. If there is already a published schedule for any included activities for those dates, you will not be able to finalize/publish the schedule partition.
• Any agents not included in the partition or those who did not submit a request during the selection period will not receive a schedule.
• Shifts are awarded based on ranking profile. If a higher ranking agent selects a shift after a lower ranking agent commits their selection that includes the shift, the higher ranking agent will receive the shift on their schedule.
• Agents can select only one shift per day (no split schedules).
• Agents can only be included in one schedule partition if there are multiple partitions that include the same dates.

Preparation

Create a working schedule that includes all of the shifts for your desired partition period. The partition period may last for 4–21 days.

We recommend keeping the participant group to 20 agents or fewer.

When generating the optimized working schedule, be sure to change the response for How do you define the people included in this schedule? to Use this working schedule’s participant list.

Create a new schedule partition

Navigate to Schedule > Schedule partitions.

Select Click here to create a new schedule partition. You may also view the status and details of existing schedule partitions.

Basic properties

In the pop-up, complete the basic properties. 

Name (required): recommend using the date of the partition.

Description: optional. 

Activity Selection: Select the activity that includes the agents you wish to include in the partition.

Ranking profile (required): Select from the drop-down options. To create a new ranking profile, go to Settings > Application settings > People settings > Ranking profiles.

Selection type: Default is hard-coded Daily Selection.

Min. Activity Overlap: Use the slider to determine how much overlap is required for an agent to see the schedule options. If the activity overlap is set to 0%, an agent will be able to select any schedule in the inventory. If the activity overlap is 100%, an agent will only see schedules that match their activities 100%. If the activity overlap is set to 50%, they will see the schedules if 50% or more of their activities overlap. For example, if an agent is assigned three activities and the slider is set to 100%, they will only see schedules that have those three activities assigned. If an agent is assigned one activity and the slider is set to 50%, the agent will see schedules that have their activity and one other, but if a schedule has three activities, this agent will not see it because the match would be 33.3% not 50%. 

For the following section, the Selection Close date must be 1–7 days after the Selection Open date, the effective date range must be 4–21 days after the Selection Close date, and the Effective Start date must align with the First day of schedule week for the selected activity (from the basic properties of the Enterprise Model). The system will not allow selecting dates that do not meet these guidelines.

Selection Open: The date that agents will be able to begin choosing their preferred schedule shifts.

Selection Close: The last day that agents will be able to make selections. A partition admin can manually close the partition earlier.

Effective Start: The first date of the schedule partition. Must be on the first day of schedule week, and must be 4 – 21 days after the selection close date. 

Effective End: Up to seven days after the effective start date.

Select Schedule Participants

We recommend limiting the participant group to 20 or fewer agents. 

If there is more than one partition with the same dates, agents may be included in only one schedule partition.

Click Select schedule participants in the navigation pane or Set up partition participants in the tile. 

In the Basic Setup, click Add people.

Click Add Participant for each person you wish to add or click Add everyone. As you select each person they will disappear from this list. 

When finished, click Cancel. You will see the list of people added to the partition.

To remove someone, return to the Basic Setup and click Remove next to the name.

Select partition inventory

Click Select partition inventory in the navigation pane or Set up item inventory in the tile.

1. Select a working schedule from the drop-down.

2. Click Import Inventory.
    

    

The Current Inventory populates with each schedule option from this working schedule.

Click Preview to view the schedule details in a new window, or Clear Inventory to start over.

Workflow navigation

You must have at least one participant and one inventory item to advance from Basic setup to Preview.

The workflow navigation is Basic setup > Advance to preview > Return to basic setup | Advance to selection > Return to preview | Advance to review > Return to selection | Finished.

When ready to allow preview by the agents, click Workflow navigation in the navigation pane or Show the workflow dialog in the tile.

In the pop-up click Advance to preview. Once you have advanced to this step you can no longer make any edits in the setup of the schedule partition.

Agents receive a memo and notification that a schedule partition is ready for selection (if these options are enabled).

If you return to Preview, any schedule selections previously made by agents (e.g., removing schedules from their list) will be reset back to the original options. 

Note: Once any agent has submitted their selections you cannot return the partition to Preview.

View agent selection

The partition must be in the Review state of the workflow navigation to review details of the agent selections. Select Workflow navigation in the navigation pane or Show the workflow dialog in the tile then click Advance to review. Navigate to the Home page for the partition to view the list of participating agents and their status (submitted or not submitted). 

Click on the agent name to review the selections. Note: You cannot edit the schedule here.

To close the partition early, select Workflow navigation in the navigation pane or Show the workflow dialog in the tile then click Advance to review.

Click workflow navigation again to re-open the inventory for selection or select Advance to finished. Once finished, you cannot make additional edits.

If there is already a published schedule for these activities for this date range, you will not be able to publish the schedule partition.

Schedule Partition Extras

Configure Administrators

View the current administrators for the partition and add new permissions.

The table includes all possible administrators (supervisors and above). Select a person or persons then click the Permissions tab. All items will be toggled on. Toggle the switches for the permissions you wish to remove or add then click Save Permissions.

Schedule Partition Reports

There are two reports: Inventory Preview and Selection Review.

Inventory Preview

This shows all of the schedules included in the working schedule. You cannot change the view options or make edits to the schedules here.

Selection Review

This report shows only the selections submitted by agents and is only available when the partition is in the workflow navigation state of Review. You cannot make edits to the schedules here.

Agent view

After receiving the notification, agents can navigate to Schedule > Schedule partitions to view the schedule inventory and rank their selections.

A green banner shows available partitions.

Click Select Shifts to view the available schedule options. Agents can also view how many other people are included in the partition, how many have submitted selections, how many have not submitted (pending), and the total number of available shifts.

Selecting days

When first opening the list of schedule options, there is a pop-up to exclude days from the inventory. Don’t want to select any schedules on Wednesday? Click to exclude it from the options. Change your mind? Click again to add it back.

Click Save to finalize your day selections and the inventory will not include the day.

Selecting shifts

The display shows each available shift for the day, with tabs for each day. If a shift has already been selected by a higher ranking agent it will appear in red. 

To remove individual shifts from the day, click the red X. The shift will disappear from the options. Once removed, you cannot add that option back to your inventory.

To move a selection up in your ranking, click the up or down arrow until the selection is in your desired position.

Submitting shifts

After selecting and organizing the shifts for each day, click Commit selections then click OK to confirm. Once committed, you cannot make changes to your selections.

After submitting, you may view your selections and their rankings, but cannot make any changes.

To view a ranked list of selections, click View my selections in the schedule partition main menu.