Creating Tymeshift general tasks

Setting up general tasks in Tymeshift allows you to track time for activities or tasks that happen outside of Zendesk. This might include things like lunch, breaks, meetings, training, and QA. You might also know general tasks as AUX codes or AUX states.

After setting up general tasks, agents can clock into them from the Tymeshift app in Zendesk. Managers can view the time recorded in Agent Activity. Additionally, general tasks can be included as part of your intraday schedule when creating locations for your teams. 

This article contains the following sections:

• Creating general tasks
• Categorizing general tasks
• Setting up general task group permissions

Creating general tasks

To create a general task

1. Hover over the admin icon, then click General tasks.
2. Click Add general task(s).
3. Enter a name for one or more tasks. For example, lunch or end of day meeting.
   
   Note: Only numbers, letters, spaces and these special characters + * . : _ - can be used in a task name. Characters like parentheses are not allowed.
   
4. Click Save.
   The task(s) are created. It's recommended to give each task a unique color by clicking the color box.
   

Categorizing general tasks

After creating general tasks, you can categorize them by type. These categories determine how Occupancy Rate, Paid Time, and Productive Times are calculated. If you need to change a setting later, any changes retroactively apply to your reports.

The following categories are available:

• Exclude from Occupancy – This is an unpaid activity. Things like lunch fall under this category since the time is unpaid but still needs to be tracked. These times are included in Unpaid General Task Time.
• Productive Time – This category is for activities related to support tasks. For example, if an agent needs to work on social media management, you can add a task for it and track it as Productive Time.
• Unproductive Time – If neither of the above options are checked, then by default, the task is recorded as unproductive time. For most tasks, this default setting is correct.
  
  

Note: Unproductive time isn’t bad – it’s a fact of support life. Things like attending training sessions need to happen, but they aren’t a core focus of an agent’s job. That’s why they fall under this category, even if they are necessary activities. 

Understanding how productive general tasks are calculated

Tymeshift calculates Productive general task time as the sum of all time an agent tracked in a general task where Productive time was selected.

Setting up general task group permissions

General tasks are accessible to all groups by default, but you can restrict them so that they're only available to certain groups (agents' default Zendesk group).
To change a general task's group permission

1. Hover over the admin icon, then click General tasks.
2. Find the task you want to change permissions for, then click the Group Permissions menu.
3. Select one or more group that you want to make the task available to.