| Add-on | Workforce Management (WFM) or Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) |
If an admin has configured your account to allow agents to trade shifts, agents can send trade requests to each other. Shift trade requests are subject to manager approval.
This article contains the following topics:
Related articles
Understanding how trading shifts works
Three users must agree to a shift change for it to be finalized: both agents and a manager. Understanding the overall process will help you know what to expect when trading shifts.
At a high level, trading shifts involves the following steps:
- An agent requests a shift trade.
- Other agents review trade requests in the shift pool.
- Agents respond to the request with an offer of one of their own shifts.
- The requesting agent accepts or rejects the offer.
- After the requesting agent accepts a trade offer, their manager is notified and can approve, deny, or reply with a comment.
- After a manager approves the trade, the request is resolved and the shifts are traded in the system. Both agents receive email notifications that the trade has been approved.
Trading your shift
As an agent, you use the Agent schedule app in Zendesk to request shift trades.
To request a shift trade
- In Support, click the Zendesk Workforce Management icon
(
) in the sidebar. - Next to Shift trades, click the options menu icon (
) and select Trade shift.
- Select the date and time of the Shift to trade.
- Choose who you want to Make your shift visible to. You can specify individual
users, Everyone, My teams, or a location.
If you specify individual users, they’ll receive an email notification about your request. Otherwise, your request is visible to the selected agents in the trade pool, but no notification is sent.
- Select your Ideal return shift date. This helps those considering taking your shift understand your preferred swap date.
- Click Send trade request.
- Your request is added to the trade pool and visible to the agents you specified in the
request.
Taking a shift trade
You can review trade requests from other agents in the shift pool.
After you accept a shift trade, a manager has to approve the trade before it's official.
To take a shift trade
- In Support, click the Zendesk Workforce Management icon
() in the sidebar.
- Next to Shift trades, click the options menu icon () and select View shift pool.
- All shift trade requests available to you are listed.
To accept a shift trade, hover over the request and click Take it.
- Select one of your shifts to trade. You can offer any shift, but it’s recommended to
base it on the requesting agent's preferred shift trade date.
- Click Send your offer.
- After you send your offer, an email is sent to the agent who submitted the trade. They
will see "(Agent Name) wants to take your shift" in the Agent Schedule app and can click
Review. They can then choose to Accept or Reject your
offer.
If accepted, the request goes to the manager of the agent who submitted the trade for approval. They may then accept, deny or react with a comment to the request.
Both agents receive an email notifying them of the manager's decision.
3 comments
Zach Gilbert
Is there any plans to allow managers to add shifts to the pool that are not tied to agents? For example, there are extra hours available and you want to make them accessible to agents to take extra shifts.
0
Tiago Magalhaes
Hi Zach - Thanks for reaching out!
We are currently working on a feature that should suit the case you're describing - Managers would be able to create “floating” schedules with no one assigned to work them, and agents would be able to request to take them. Still working on that but coming soon!
0
Zach Gilbert
Perfect. There are a few times a year when we need this! So glad to hear.
0