Manage work conditions

WFM differentiates between routine and non-routine activities. It categorizes activities that occur during every work shift (such as breaks and lunches) as routine. These routine activities are called work conditions. A work condition is a set of rules used to identify routine activities that prevent the agent from answering contacts.

There are two types of work conditions:

Paid hours—Shift length is extended due to unpaid breaks and lunches
Shift length—Shift length is not extended due to unpaid breaks and lunches

NOTE The Schedule service uses only paid hours work conditions. Intraday dynamic scheduling and partial day trades and offers use only shift length work conditions.

A work condition might be linked to fixed, assignment, or variable work shifts, or work condition profiles that are assigned to agents. If the agent can work four-and-half to six hours during a work shift and scheduling is in half-hour increments, you can configure work conditions for 4.5, 5, 5.5, and 6 hours and assign them to the agent’s work shift, or have them as general conditions. You can also configure a range-based work condition that covers a range from 4.5 to 6 hours.

NOTE WFM will create agent schedules with no breaks or lunches if you do not assign work conditions and do not have any general work conditions. If you do not want to assign specific work conditions to specific work shifts or work condition profiles, create general work conditions.

NOTE Only general conditions and work conditions assigned to work condition profiles that are assigned to agents are used in dynamic availability and partial day offers and trades.

For each work condition activity, you must specify the following information:

Name
Duration
The minimum delay between the start of the work shift and the start of this work condition activity. For example, if the work shift starts at 08:00 and this work condition activity cannot start any earlier than 09:00, the minimum delay must be 1:00.

NOTE The delay must fit into the smaller length of a range-based condition.
The maximum delay between the start of the work shift and the start of this work condition activity. For example, if the work shift starts at 08:00 and this work condition activity cannot start any later than 09:20, the maximum delay must be 1:20.
The minimum interval between the end of the previous work condition activity and the start of this work condition activity. For example, if the previous work condition activity is a 15-minute break, and this work condition activity is a one-hour lunch, and there must be at least an hour and a half between the break and the lunch, the minimum interval must be 90 minutes.
The increment in minutes that WFM uses to schedule the work condition activity. Possible values are 00:05, 00:10, 00:15, 00:20, and 00:30.
The portion that is paid. For example, you can indicate that 15-minute breaks are paid and that one-hour lunches are unpaid.

Note that when creating schedules, the Schedule service verifies that all the work condition activities can be applied as configured. If there is no valid time where all the work condition activities can be applied as configured, the Schedule service ignores the work condition activity with a warning in the log and debug files.

The Schedule service applies the work condition activities for a work condition in the following order. All values are in ascending order except where noted.

Minimum delay
Maximum delay
Duration
Paid portion
Minimum intervals
Increment
Break type (Lunch before Break)
Break name
Color ID

It prefers to adhere to the work condition configuration rather than to the service queue need.

The work condition that is applied to an agent’s work shift on a specific date is selected on the following basis:

The list of paid hours work conditions associated with the condition profile (if specified for the agent), the work shift (if assigned), and the list of general paid hours work conditions are separately sorted as follows:
1. Minimum paid hours (descending order)
2. Maximum paid hours (descending order)
3. Start time (ascending order)
4. Work condition ID (ascending order)
Search paid hours work conditions associated with the work condition profile (if specified for the agent) before paid hours work conditions associated with the work shift (if assigned) before searching among general paid hours work conditions.

Search criteria for work conditions are:
- Is enabled on the day of the week
- Has start time earlier or the same as the work shift start time
- Has the same minimum and maximum shift length as the scheduled work shift length
- Scheduled work shift length is within the minimum and maximum shift length

After the above sorting and filtering for valid matches, work conditions are selected according to the following table. In this table,

“Range” refers to a work condition where the minimum and maximum paid hours are not the same.
“Non-range” refers to a work condition where the minimum and maximum paid hours are the same.
“None” means that no work condition is configured.

Work Condition Source
General	work Condition Profile	Work Shift	Source Used
Non-range, range, none	Non-range	Non-range	Work condition profile
	Non-range, range	Range	Work condition profile
	Range	Non-range	Work shift
	Range	None	Work condition profile
	None	Non-range, range	Work shift
Non-range, range	None	None	General work condition

One way to avoid scheduling conflicts is to use the following parameter assignments:

morning break maximum delay = lunch minimum delay — lunch minimum interval — morning break duration

lunch minimum delay = morning break maximum delay + morning break duration + lunch minimum interval

Example 1: Work condition without unpaid activities

A contact center has created three work condition activities: Morning Break, Lunch, and Afternoon Break. Work shifts are eight hours long. The start and end times of work shifts are variable: start times can be as early as 07:30 and end times as late as 17:30.

The work condition activities are configured as follows.

Activity	Min Delay	Max Delay	Duration	Min Interval
Morning Break	01:30	03:00	00:15	00:00
Lunch	03:00	05:00	00:30	01:30
Afternoon Break	05:30	06:45	00:15	01:30

If an agent’s work shift begins at 8:00 AM, then that agent’s morning break can start any time between 9:30 AM and 11:00 AM. The agent’s lunch can start any time between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM. The agent’s afternoon break can start any time between 1:30 PM and 2:45 PM.

For example, assume that to handle predicted call volume, WFM must schedule an agent to begin work at 8:00 AM and to take a lunch break from 11:00—11:30 AM. WFM then schedules the agent’s morning break from 9:30–9:45 AM to satisfy the minimum delay of 01:30 for that work condition activity.

However, the earliest that lunch can start is 11:15 AM (9:45 AM plus 1:30, the minimum interval between this and the previous activity). WFM cannot create a schedule that satisfies all the parameters as configured. This situation can be corrected by decreasing the minimum delay of the morning break from 01:30 to 01:15 or by decreasing the lunch minimum interval to 01:15.

Example 2: Work condition with unpaid activities

A contact center has created three work condition activities: Morning Break, Lunch, and Afternoon Break. The lunch break is unpaid time. Work shifts are eight hours long, but since there is a one-hour unpaid lunch, the work shift actually spans nine hours. The Schedule service will schedule nine hours for the agent.

The start and end times of work shifts are variable: start times can be as early as 7:30 AM and end times as late as 6:30 PM.

Activity	Min Delay	Max Delay	Duration	Min Interval
Morning Break	01:15	03:00	00:15	00:00
Lunch	03:00	05:00	01:00 (unpaid)	01:30
Afternoon Break	08:00	08:30	00:15	01:30

If an agent’s work shift begins at 8:00 AM, then the agent’s morning break can start any time between 9:30 AM and 11:00 AM. The agent’s lunch can start any time between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM.

The agent’s afternoon break can start any time between 4:00 PM and 4:30 PM. This allows for the one-hour unpaid lunch. It adds the hour and allows you to put in a delay of 08:00, something you could not do if the lunch were a paid activity. You cannot have a delay that is the same length of the work shift unless there is unpaid time included, in this case, the agent’s schedule spans a period of nine hours.

Scheduling and unpaid activities

Work conditions do not always extend shifts to accommodate unpaid activities.

For normal scheduling (standard work shifts, dynamic availability, and dynamic scheduling), the work conditions that are applied will extend the shift to meet the paid and unpaid hours of the shift. For example, if an agent is scheduled for an eight-hour shift and the eight-hour paid hours work condition that is applied includes an unpaid one-hour lunch break, then the shift is scheduled to cover an actual period of nine hours to accommodate the one-hour unpaid lunch break plus eight hours of paid activities.

For other types of events that work conditions apply to, such as intraday dynamic scheduling and partial day offers and trades, work conditions do not extend shifts for unpaid activities. For example, if an agent picks up two hours of overtime in an intraday scheduling event from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM, a two-hour shift length work condition might be applied, and if that two-hour work condition contains an unpaid 30-minute lunch break, then it will be placed within the two-hour segment and not extend it. The overtime shift will continue to be 3:00—5:00 PM and not beyond, and the agent will be paid for one-and-a-half hours, not two hours.

Field descriptions

Use the Work Conditions page to create, edit, and delete work conditions.

The fields on the Work Conditions page are described below.

Field	Description
Work Condition Name	The name of the work condition. The name should make it easy to identify the work condition when assigning it to agents: for example, “Customer Service - 4.5 hours.” You can also use this field to change the name of an existing work condition.
Work Condition Type	The type of work condition: Paid hours—(Default) When you select paid-hours-based work conditions, the system extends the shift length due to unpaid breaks and lunches. Shift length—When you select shift-length-based work conditions, the system does not extend the shift length due to unpaid breaks and lunches.
Allow paid hours to be a range	(Appears only if Paid Hours in Work Condition Type is selected) Select this check box to specify a minimum and maximum number of paid hours.
Paid Hours	(Appears only if the “Allow paid hours to be a range” check box is not selected) The total number of paid hours (in HH:MM) for the work condition.
Minimum Paid Hours	(Appears only if “Allow paid hours to be a range” is selected) The minimum number of paid hours (in HH:MM) for the work condition.
Maximum Paid Hours	(Appears only if “Allow paid hours to be a range” is selected) The maximum number of paid hours (in HH:MM) for the work condition.
Allow shift length to be a range	(Appears only when Shift Length in Work Condition Type is selected) Select this check box to enter a minimum and maximum shift length.
Shift Length	(Appears only if “Allow shift length to be a range” is not selected) The total shift length (in HH:MM) for the work condition.
Minimum Shift Length	(Appears only if “Allow shift length to be a range” is selected) The minimum shift length (in HH:MM) for the work condition.
Maximum Shift Length	(Appears only if “Allow shift length to be a range” is selected) Enter the maximum shift length (in HH:MM) for the work condition.
This is a general condition	Select this check box if this work condition applies to every work shift with the same number of hours or range of hours of work per day, and if no other work condition is associated with those work shifts. If you do not select the check box for a work condition and no other work condition is linked to a work shift or work condition profile associated with the agent, WFM will not schedule breaks or lunches to agents assigned to this work shift. NOTE There can be only one general condition per scheduled shift length or paid hours to which the work shift is applied. Only general conditions and work conditions associated with work condition profiles assigned to agents are used in dynamic availability and partial day offers and trades.
Apply work condition to work shifts with any arrival time	Select this check box if you want the work condition to apply to work shifts with any arrival time. If the check box is cleared, specify a time if you want the work condition to apply to work shifts that begin at or later than that specified arrival time. These options are mutually exclusive: you can select only one of them.
Days to Include	The days to which this work condition applies. By default, every day is selected. At least one day must be selected.
Activities	Click Add to add a row to the Activities table, and then specify the details of the activity. These include: Name—Enter a name to describe the break or lunch. If you leave this field empty, WFM fills it with Break. Type—Break or Lunch. Min Delay—The minimum amount of time in HH:MM format that must elapse between the shift start time and the start of this activity. This value must be in multiples of five minutes. If anything else is entered, the value is rounded to the nearest five minutes. Max Delay—The maximum amount of time in HH:MM format that can elapse between the shift start time and the start of this activity. This value must be in multiples of five minutes. If anything else is entered, the value is rounded to the nearest five minutes. Duration—The length of time the activity lasts in HH:MM format. This value must be in multiples of five minutes. If anything else is entered, the value is rounded to the nearest five minutes. Activities with a value of zero (0) are ignored. Increment—The increment during an hour when the activity can begin. For example, if the activity can start one hour after the shift start of 08:00 and you choose the 15-minute increment, the activity might start at 09:15, 09:30, or 09:45. Min Interval—The minimum amount of time between this and the previous activity. This value must be in multiples of five minutes. If anything else is entered, the value is rounded to the nearest five minutes. Paid Portion—The portion of the activity in HH:MM format that is paid. Activities that are not paid extend the work shift by the unpaid duration for paid hours work conditions. For example, an eight-hour work shift with a one-hour unpaid lunch will become a work shift that spans nine hours. There is a limit of 48 hours in a work condition. Color/Color ID—The color that represents this activity in the schedule. The color ID is the hex code for the selected color. Activity Metadata—(Optional) Assigns a metadata value to, or removes a metadata value from, breaks or lunches. Assigning or removing a metadata value here overrides any default metadata values that you assigned on the Activity Metadata page. For more information about configuring metadata values and assigning them to breaks and lunches, see Manage activity metadata values.
Maximum Optimization Adjustment	Allows you to control the amount of time the Optimize Schedules function can move a break or lunch forward or backward within the activity constraints. If the value is empty, the optimizer can move the activity as far as the activity constraints allow. If the value is zero (0), the activity cannot be moved. NOTE The maximum value for this field is 23:59.
Assign Work Condition Profiles	One or more work condition profiles assigned to the work condition.
Assign Work Shifts	(Appears only when Work Condition Type is Paid Hours) One or more work shifts that will use this work condition.

Work condition button definitions

Button	Description
Save	Click to save the new or changed work condition. This button is disabled until a work condition is named or selected, and all populated fields are valid.
Delete	Click to delete the work condition. This button is disabled until a work condition is named or selected.
Cancel	Click to cancel changes to the work condition.