How does the schedule assistant work?

Want a schedule that just works? This article has all the details.

In this article:

• What is the schedule assistant?
• Why should I use the schedule assistant?
• How do I use the schedule assistant?
• How are people's shifts scheduled?
• How are events scheduled?
• Can I place a one-off event?
• What time range can the schedule assistant handle?
• Can the schedule assistant update the current day?
• Can I still use the old optimization feature?
• Demo

What is the schedule assistant?

The schedule assistant is a friendly companion that lives on the Staffing timeline and helps you optimize your schedule. 

To do this, it will use your scheduling rules to help you easily place and adjust events on your agents’ calendars while maximizing your coverage.

Because it uses existing scheduling rules, you'll be able to generate, validate, and optimize all of your schedules quickly and easily — and they'll all draw from the same source of truth. 

The schedule assistant follows these principles:

• It tries to move as few events as possible while still maximizing coverage.
• Every new or rescheduled event will improve coverage.
• If net staffing for a queue is already greater than 0, it won't make any changes.

For more detail on how our AI scheduling features work, check out our blog post.

Why should I use the schedule assistant?

The schedule assistant can help you:

• Quickly add breaks and meals. If you've placed productive events for everyone, it will choose the best time for all your rest periods to maximize coverage.
• Clean up your schedule. If you've manually adjusted events on your schedule, you might notice that some scheduling rules are broken by the changes. If you use the schedule assistant, it'll review everything and correct as many issues as it can.
• Adjust for a volume change. If a certain queue or channel is receiving an influx of contacts, you might make a forecast adjustment so that's reflected in today’s required staffing. When you use the schedule assistant, it will adjust your schedules for the rest of the day so the increase in volume is covered.
• Schedule a one-off event. For example, if you need to schedule a team meeting, you can create a rule to manage that event. Next, use the schedule assistant to find the best time for everyone who needs to be there.

How do I use the schedule assistant?

Ready to start? Here are the steps.

1. Select Schedule assistant from the toolbar. We will default to the time range and filters selected on the staffing timeline.
2. Tell the assistant whose schedules should be adjusted over which date range, and choose which events it can change
3. If you're using a test schedule, decide what to do with it. 
   • If you decide to improve your test schedule, we’ll keep all the events except for the event types you just selected. 
   • If you decide to reset it, we'll create a new copy of the default schedule. This is helpful if you’d like to include things like updated time off or Google Calendar events. You'll only be able to reset your test schedule if you decided to update all events in the previous step.
4. Next, decide if you'd like to schedule everyone, just the people who are on the schedule already, or just the people who don't have any schedules at all. For example, you might want to run the schedule assistant if you're adding some new hires to the schedule. In that case, you'd tell it to only schedule the new people who aren't scheduled yet.
5. Finally, the schedule assistant might ask if you want to use working hours or scheduled events to decide when each person's shifts should be.
6. Review your summary to make sure everything looks good. When you're ready, select Update schedules.
7. The schedule assistant will find the best placement on each person's schedule for the events you chose.
8. When the schedule assistant is done working, we'll apply the changes automatically.
9. Next, you'll get an email to let you know your new schedule is ready. In the email, we'll list which events were changed and how many people's schedules were updated. You can visit the Staffing timeline and select Scheduling history to view full details of the changes (or undo them if you need to).

How are people's shifts scheduled?

The schedule assistant can use two methods to create shifts:

• Working hours: The schedule assistant will use the person's assigned working hours rules to understand how it should schedule them. 
• Typical shifts: If someone already has events on their schedule for this time period, the schedule assistant will use those events to define their typical shift. This could be different from their assigned working hours, because it's just looking at the selected time period. If they don't have events, the schedule assistant will use their working hours as a backup.

You can choose which method you prefer. Keep in mind that if someone doesn't have any working hours or any existing events, they won't be scheduled.

How are events scheduled?

• Productive events will be placed to best cover the forecasted volume across all your channel and queue combinations.
• Default events (like meals and breaks) will be placed if people are assigned to a matching scheduling rule. For example, if you have three sites with different required meal periods, you can create a rule for each site. The optimized schedule will follow all three rules to make sure you're in compliance with each location's requirements.
• Manual events will not change. That means we won't adjust time off events, recurring events, anything synced from your Google Calendar, or anything you created or updated manually.

Can I place a one-off event?

If you need to add just one event, like a new training session on every person's schedule sometime in the next 5 days, the schedule assistant can help! This means you can schedule one-off events (like trainings, team meetings, or special sessions) across multiple people's schedules — without manually picking a specific time for each person.

To do this: 

1. Create a scheduling rule for the event. 
2. When prompted to choose how often the event will repeat, select Custom date range. 
3. Use the schedule assistant. It will place that event within the date range you choose. The event will be placed for each selected person, one time, anywhere within the custom date range. 

What time range can the schedule assistant handle?

The schedule assistant can help with schedules up to 31 days in the future.

Keep in mind that the timing requirements of your scheduling rules may affect which events are optimized.

For example, let's say you have a scheduling rule for a team meeting event that must happen 1 time each week. Here's how we'll handle it:

• If you choose to optimize a 3-day period, this event won't be placed at all. 
• If you optimize a standard calendar week (Sunday through Sunday or Monday through Monday, depending on your Assembled settings), the event will be placed once. 
• If you optimize 3 standard calendar weeks, the event will be placed 3 times.

Can the schedule assistant update the current day?

Yes! You can use the schedule assistant to update the rest of today, or just part of it.

If you decide to update today's schedule, the next 5 minutes will not change. This means you'll have time to let agents know if parts of their schedules are changing.

When you're updating the current day:

• Productive events may change, even if they're already in progress. For example, the schedule assistant might move agents from one work type to another.
• Default events will only change if they haven't started yet. For example, the schedule assistant might move a break that's scheduled for later today, but it will not move a break that's already in progress.

Can I still use the old optimization feature?

We're retiring it. However, we'll keep the existing optimization rules page available for now so you can use it as a reference!

Demo