Zendesk Workforce management (WFM) general tasks are tasks that admins set up to track agent activities or tasks that take place outside of Zendesk. They’re used to track agents’ non-ticketing work, which helps admins and managers to fully understand how agents' time is spent.
For example, general tasks may include necessary activities such as meetings or breaks.
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Understanding WFM general tasks
WFM general tasks are used to track agents’ time spent on necessary, non-ticketing work or activities. Sometimes known as AUX codes or states, they help you understand how much of your agents’ time is spent on support-related activity and can be used in calculating your occupancy rate.
Admins can define and customize the general tasks available in your organization. For example, some common general tasks are breaks, meetings, and training.
When defining general tasks, admins can determine if the general task is available to all the teams in your organization or restrict certain general tasks to specific teams.
About paid time and productive time general task settings
Admins can define if the general task is counted as paid time or productive time. If the general task is counted as paid or productive time, it’s included when calculating your occupancy rate.
For example, you may want to define a “lunch” general task as unpaid time. By defining it as a general task, you’re still tracking agents’ time.
There are certain scenarios where you’ll want to define general tasks as productive time. For example, if an agent works on social media management outside of Zendesk, then you could create a general task for that type of work and track it as productive time. Note that all productive time tasks are included in paid time.
However, not all general tasks need to be defined as productive time. Unproductive time is a standard part of customer support work. Activities or tasks such as attending training or meetings could be considered unproductive time. While they’re necessary activities, they aren’t the core focus of an agent’s job.
Understanding how team members interact with general tasks
- Admins: Can define and edit general tasks for the organization. Additionally, admins can include general tasks as part of the intraday schedule when creating locations for their teams.
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Managers, team leads: Can view general tasks on the Agent activity page, which includes an activity breakdown of
agents’ paid and unpaid time. General tasks appear in this summary.
Team members in these roles can also view this information in the historical Agent activity report, as well as in any custom reports that use agent activity grouping and metrics. Additionally, if the team member is in a role with permission for their Organization structure, they can also include general tasks in their intraday schedules.
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Agents: Agents can view general tasks on their schedules. They can also clock in to general tasks from the WFM time tracker in the top
navigation bar in Zendesk Support. This will automatically set their Talk availability status, as defined by the admin for
that general task. See Setting up WFM general tasks
