Limit a supervisor’s ability to edit schedules
An administrator might want to limit a supervisor’s ability to edit agent schedules for various reasons. For example, a supervisor might be in training and not yet experienced enough to have full access to schedule editing. The Schedule Editing Rules page allows you to assign a schedule editing rule to specific supervisors that manages their editing capabilities.
You can configure a rule to prevent supervisors from the following actions:
- Inserting any activities, or only inserting certain kinds of activities
- Trading schedules
- Changing schedules using the Find Optimal Time feature
- Moving various types of activities (for example, lunches or breaks) by more than a specified number of minutes
- Changing schedules using the Optimize Schedules feature
- Restoring a previous schedule using the Schedule History and Restore feature
- Adding, editing, or deleting activity notes on exceptions or projects in Agent Schedules
NOTE A schedule edit rule overrides the Administer WFM and Administer Schedules permissions. For example, these permissions grant access to the Schedule History and Restore feature, but if you apply a rule that limits access, the supervisor cannot access that feature from either Application Management or Agent Schedules despite having those permissions.
If you just assign a schedule editing rule to a supervisor, then that supervisor is prevented from doing whatever task you have set limits on or from moving activities by more than a specified amount of time. However, you can create a workflow that will allow a supervisor to perform a task but will defer the resulting schedule changes from taking place until they have been manually approved. This is done by use of a workflow.
NOTE A supervisor subject to a manual approval workflow cannot save changes to a schedule if the supervisor uses custom filtering (the Custom option at the bottom of the filter list that allows you to select a combination of teams, service queues, service queue groups, and skill mappings to filter the Agent Schedule page). The save action will work if the supervisor filters the page by only one team, service queue, or skill mapping.
NOTE If a supervisor who is subject to a schedule editing rule edits an exception or project and at the same time edits or adds an activity note, the activity note will not be displayed when the approving supervisor views the edit for approval. When the edit is approved, the note will not be saved.
Setting up a workflow is optional. You do not need a workflow for a change that meets the rule requirements to take effect (for example, a supervisor who is limited to moving a break no more than 30 minutes is allowed to move a break 15 minutes), However, setting up a workflow enables WFM to check coverage and staffing. If that is important in your contact center, set up workflows along with schedule editing rules.
Creating a workflow
You can set up a schedule edit workflow on the Workflows page (Application Management > Activities > Workflows) that can approve, deny, or force manual handling for schedule changes. For more information about how to configure a workflow, see Automate handling of agent requests.
When creating a schedule edit workflow, use the following options:
- Choose a Schedule Edit event.
- Assign the appropriate supervisors in the Assign Users section.
- Choose the Manual Handling, Approve, or Deny action.
The workflow runs when the supervisor clicks Save after making edits on the Agent Schedules page. If the action chosen for the workflow is Manual Handling, the changes will not go into effect until they are manually approved by an administrator or scheduler on the Schedule Edit Management page (see Approve or deny schedule changes made by supervisors).
Managing schedule editing rules
Use the Schedule Editing Rules page to create, edit, and delete schedule editing rules.
Create a new schedule editing rule
- Choose the Create new schedule editing rule option.
- Enter a unique name for the rule.
- Select the activities you want to prevent supervisors from performing in the “Prevent user from doing” pane. You can prevent supervisors from inserting all or some types of new activities, trading schedules, and finding optimal times.
- Select the existing activities you want to prevent or limit supervisors from moving in the schedule more than a specified number of minutes. For example, select “Breaks by more than” and enter 15 in the minutes field to limit a supervisor from moving a break more than 15 minutes earlier or later in the schedule. To prevent the supervisor from moving breaks at all, enter 0 in the minutes field.
- Assign supervisors to the rule by selecting them in the Available pane and moving them to the Assigned pane. Only supervisors are listed in the Available pane.
- Click Save.
Edit or delete an existing schedule editing rule
- Choose the Edit or delete existing schedule editing rule option.
- Select the desired rule from the Schedule Editing Rule drop-down list and do one of the following:
- Edit the rule as desired, and then click Save.
- To delete the rule, click Delete, and then click Yes to confirm the deletion.