BPO management add-on, billed separately · Admin or Manager role
- Add-on
- BPO management, billed separately. To add it, contact our team.
- View BPO planning and upload allocations
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Admin or Manager role
Or a custom role with BPO management set to Can manage BPOs and allocations on the Data & integrations tab
People with restricted sites see only their own sites, and upload commitments instead of requirements.
Admins set roles and permissions in Manage team > Roles and permissions.
Use BPO planning to share your staffing requirements with your BPOs for the coming weeks and months, and to track them. For each BPO site and queue, it compares the hours you require with the hours the BPO has committed to, scheduled, and delivered.
To open it, go to Forecast > BPO planning.
Navigating BPO planning
| # | Item | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Channels, Queues, Sites, Schedule | Choose the channels, queues, BPO sites, and schedule to show. |
| 2 | By site or By queue, and Sort by | Group the rows by site or by queue, and sort them by name or by any metric, lowest or highest first. |
| 3 | Week or Month | Show totals by week or by month. Use the arrows to move between periods. |
| 4 | Month headings | In Month view, select a month to see its weeks. Select Back to month view to return. |
| 5 | View upload history, Upload allocations, Export | Review past uploads, upload requirements or commitments, and export the data. |
How BPO planning works
Each site or queue has a row for each metric. Use View options to choose which rows appear.
| Metric | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Required | The hours you require from the BPO, from the requirements you upload. There’s a row for each interval your company uses, such as Required (month) or Required (hour). |
| Committed | The hours the BPO has committed to, from the commitments the BPO uploads. Like Required, there’s a row for each interval. |
| Scheduled | The hours scheduled in Assembled for the BPO’s team members. |
| Adherence | The hours the BPO’s team members worked in adherence to their schedules. |
- Each cell also shows the difference from the metric in the row above it. Hover over a difference to see how it’s calculated.
- To choose how differences appear, select Show diff. number, Show diff. percentage, or Show overall percentage in View options.
- The intervals you can upload and view, such as month, week, or hour, are set for your company. To change them, contact our team.
Requirements and commitments
What you upload with Upload allocations depends on whether your access is limited to certain sites:
| Upload | Who uploads it | What it contains |
|---|---|---|
| Requirements | People without restricted sites, usually your own team | The hours you require from each BPO site, by channel and queue. |
| Commitments | People with Restricted sites, usually BPO managers | The productive hours the BPO commits to, with optional planned overtime and planned shrinkage. |
A common way to set requirements:
- Export your required staffing from Report > Staffing heatmaps. See Staffing heatmaps.
- Outside Assembled, split the requirement between your BPO sites, for example by percentage.
- Upload the result to BPO planning.
Upload requirements or commitments
A requirements file has one row for each site, queue, and period, with these columns:
start_time |
channel |
queue |
site |
required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2023-08-21 00:00:00 |
chat |
Tier 1 queue |
Site A |
650 |
- Go to Forecast > BPO planning and select Upload allocations.
- To see the format for your upload, select Download example.
- Choose your CSV file.
- Match each field to a column in your file.
- Choose the Interval the values are for, such as Week or Month, and enter a Description for the upload.
- For intervals shorter than a day, choose the Time zone of your start times.
- Select Upload.
When the upload finishes, you see New vendor allocations uploaded, and the Required or Committed rows show the new values. Each upload is saved in the upload history, so you can see how the numbers have changed.
Review past uploads
Upload history keeps a record of every upload, so you have an audit trail of how your requirements came to be.
- Select View upload history. The list shows the uploads that affected the dates you’re viewing, with who uploaded each one, its type, its interval, and when it was uploaded.
- For any upload, select:
- Rename to give it a name that’s easier to find.
- Compare to compare it with the data you’re viewing. See Compare with a past upload.
- View snapshot to see the page as it looked when that upload was made. See View a snapshot.
View a snapshot
A snapshot shows the page as it looked when an upload was made. Select View snapshot next to the upload. A banner says which upload you’re viewing. Select Go back to present day to return.
Compare with a past upload
Comparing shows how your numbers have increased or decreased since a past upload. After you select Compare in the upload history, a comparison section appears under the rows you’re viewing, labeled Compare with and the upload’s name. Each cell shows the difference and the percentage difference. Hover over a difference to see how it’s calculated.
To highlight large changes, set thresholds:
- Select Edit thresholds.
- In Threshold settings, select Warning for Less than or Greater than, or both, and enter a percentage for each.
- Select Set threshold.
Cells that decreased by more than the Less than percentage are highlighted in orange, and cells that increased by more than the Greater than percentage are highlighted in blue. By default, both thresholds are 10%. Thresholds apply to everyone in your company. To leave the comparison, select Exit comparison.
For example: with Less than set to −2% and Greater than set to 4%, a cell that fell by 3% is orange, and a cell that rose by 5% is blue.
Export BPO planning data
- Select Export, then To CSV or To Google Sheets.
- Choose the Interval and the Export range.
- For a CSV, select Export. For Google Sheets, select Next, choose the spreadsheet, sheet, and how often to export, then select Export.
The interval decides which data is exported. For example, with Hour selected, allocations you uploaded by hour are exported for each hour in the range. For more about scheduled exports, see Google Sheets exports.
See more detail for a site or queue
Each site or queue row has a menu next to its name:
- View breakdown by queues or View breakdown by sites shows that row’s data split by queue or by site. To return, select the button to exit the breakdown.
- View hourly breakdown opens BPO requirements heatmaps in a new tab, filtered to that site or queue, so you can see which hours drive a gap. It appears when your company uses intervals of an hour or less.