Editing forecasts

With Tymeshift, you can modify your forecast by increasing or decreasing the incoming volumes based on known upcoming events. Additionally, you can change your team's staffing parameters to see how it affects the full-time equivalent (FTE) count.

This article contains the following sections:

• Adjusting volume
• Excluding historical inbound volume outliers
• Editing staffing parameters

Related articles

• Forecast overview

Adjusting volume

The forecast gives you the ability to adjust your expected volumes based on unique upcoming events, such as marketing campaigns and feature removals. 

To adjust the volume

1. Hover over the cloud icon and click Forecast.
   
2. Select a workstream.
3. In the Volume adjustments panel, click the plus sign (+) icon to add a volume adjustment. From here, you can:
   • Rename your adjustment to give it more context (marketing, new feature release, etc.)
   • Select the date range to apply the volume changes.
   • Specify the percentage or value of expected volume increase or decrease using +/- in the field.
     
4. You can continue to create additional volume adjustments by clicking the plus sign (+) icon. 
5. When you're done, click Save.
   Your Inbound volume chart and Required staffing count update.
   
   Note: After you've saved one or more volume adjustments, you can enable or disable an adjustment by selecting or clearing its check box.

Excluding historical inbound volume outliers

This feature gives you the ability to exclude historical data outliers from being taken into account when generating a forecast. This can be used for a number of reasons, for example, a one-off marketing campaign or an outage that could have caused your inbound volume to spike.

After you've saved the excluded outliers, it takes some time to recalculate. When it completes, you can see how the forecast looks without historical spikes affecting it. Note that this option is not available for imported data and you will have to edit these within the import itself. 

To exclude historical inbound volume outliers

1. Select a workstream from the Forecast page.
2. In the Excluded Outliers panel, click the plus sign (+) icon to add an outlier.
3. Click in the name field or select the options menu icon (three dots), then select Rename.
   It's recommended to accurately rename the outlier.
   
4. Choose a start and end time and date as well as the time you want to exclude.
5. Click Save.
   Your Inbound volume chart and Required staffing count update.

To delete an excluded outlier, click the options menu icon (three dots), then select Delete. If you wanted to delete all of the outliers created, click the  button at the bottom of the column. 

Note: If the exclusion date range selected doesn't have enough data preceding it to remove the outlier (a minimum of two weeks is required), this specific outlier won't be replaced and a warning will be shown. The forecast will still be generated successfully.

Editing staffing parameters

The forecast allows you to modify the FTE count parameters according to your set business requirements because not every workstream can have the exact First Response Time (FRT), Average Handle Time (AHT) and shrinkage expectations.

Note: Shrinkage is the % value of unscheduled or scheduled activities (vacations, sick leaves, etc.) which prevent employees from performing their work. The industry standard is approximately 15-35%.

You can also set specific business hours and a channel preference for a workstream. The channel preference controls staffing parameters that will be used to build your staffing forecast.

To modify your FTE count parameters

1. Select a workstream from the Forecast page.
2. In the Excluded Outliers panel, click the arrow to expand the panel. From here you can:
   • Select the Channel preference for the workstream. 
   • Adjust the Occupancy Rate for the workstream.
   • Change the AHT and select values for hh:mm:ss.
   • Specify the Target of the FRT and select the values for hh:mm:ss.
   • State the SLA attainment Target.
   • Enter a Shrinkage value.
   • Add the minimum staffing number you need for that workstream.
   • Choose whether or not you want to specify your availability or business hours. 
   • You can also reset to the default values by selecting  .
     
3. When you're done, click Save.