Summary: ◀▼
Use scheduling to create and test draft schedules without affecting agents, revert to published versions, and export/import schedules for backup. Copy schedules to save time. When managing schedules, remember CSV imports replace shifts, review time off entries to avoid duplicates, use overtime for extra coverage, set weekly hours carefully, and understand time off auto-approval rules and cancellation policies to maintain accurate scheduling and reporting.
Use scheduling in Zendesk Workforce Management (WFM) to build draft schedules, test changes, and publish coverage plans for your teams. This article provides best practices and tips for managing schedules so you can keep your schedules accurate and make changes with confidence.
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Tips for testing schedules
Use these tips to test your draft and published schedules:
- Experiment with draft schedules. Draft schedules let you experiment without affecting agents because agents don’t see draft changes until you publish them. See Publishing the schedule.
- Revert to the last published version. You can revert a draft schedule to its last published state. See Reverting published changes.
- Export and reimport schedules. You can export a schedule to CSV and import it later if you need to restore or reuse it. See Exporting a schedule.
- Copy schedules to save time. You can copy an entire week of scheduled shifts for your whole team or for a specific group of agents. You can also copy one agent’s week to another agent. See Editing your WFM schedule for multiple agents and Editing your WFM schedule for an agent.
Best practices for managing schedules
Keep these best practices in mind when managing schedules in WFM:
- CSV imports replace shifts for the listed agents within the date range in the file. See About importing a schedule.
- Review time off entries before importing. Time off entries aren’t overwritten during import and can stack if they overlap or are duplicated, which can affect your reporting. Unless you intend to import time off, make sure your CSV file doesn’t include time off entries.
- Use overtime for extra coverage. Add overtime when you need extra coverage for a workstream and agents need to work outside of their normal schedule. You can create an overtime general task or unified status and map it to a workstream so agents remain in adherence while working extra hours where needed. See Adding a task.
- Set weekly hours carefully. For the weekly working hours setting in your location’s automatic shift requirements, set the minimum and maximum number of hours an agent should be scheduled each week. This value represents the total scheduled shift length, regardless of the amount of unpaid time within a shift. For example, if agents work five days a week with nine-hour shifts that include a one-hour lunch, set the maximum value to 45 hours. See Creating automatic shifts.
- Understand how time off auto-approval works. Time off auto-approval rules apply to a team, but they check for existing time off across the entire WFM pool. For example, a rule for Team A that approves time off when fewer than 10 people have time off in a week, checks approved time off requests for all agents, not just agents on Team A. See Creating automatic approval rules for time off requests.
- Check all applicable rules for agents on multiple teams. When an agent is part of multiple teams, time off auto-approval checks all relevant rules. Time off is auto-approved only if all rules pass.
- Keep in mind that agents can cancel pending or approved time off requests anytime before the time off starts, whether the request is approved or still pending. This action doesn’t require manager approval. See Cancelling a time off request.
- Review deleted time off entries in the audit log. Time off entries that a manager deletes from the Schedule page don't appear in the Time off management page. Information about those entries remains available in the WFM audit log. See Viewing the WFM audit log for changes.