Preferences

Workforce Management (WFM) preferences enable you to set preferences for your availability, shifts, and days off. Entering any one of these types of preferences lets your supervisor know when you prefer to work and what days to prefer to have off. Supervisors can then take your preferences into consideration when building schedules.

Availability preferences and patterns

Availability preferences and availability patterns are similar, in that you can use either one to let your supervisor know when you are available for work. However, adding availability preferences is usually a one-of entry. Meaning it's only applicable once, for the dates you specify. You can add more than one availability in a preference, but it doesn't establish a pattern for a specific time period. For that, you will use availability patterns.

Use availability patterns to easily set your preferences when they are the same for multiple weeks, or set weekly patterns that you can reuse at any time. For example, you might want to create an availability pattern to let your supervisor know that you are available (and prefer) to work between the hours of 7:30 am and 9:30 am on Tues, Wednesday, and Thursdays for the next three weeks. Unless you create a pattern, you will have to enter your availability for each week separately (even though your availability is the same for all three weeks).

Click Preferences in the Menu bar and select one of three views from the drop-down menu: Calendar, Details, or Availability Patterns. Use these views to:

• View your preferences for shifts, availability, and days off.
• View your shifts, time off, and rotating patterns.
• Add, edit, or delete your preferences for shifts, your availability or days off.
• Create Availability Patterns.
• Create preferences, by using Availability Patterns.
• Enter comments associated with your preferences.

Important

You cannot edit or delete exceptions, time off, working hours, or granted preferences. If you need to change an exception or a granted preference, contact your supervisor.

Viewing preferences in the calendar

In the Calendar view, each item is marked with color representing its type and status.

To display the Statuses color-coded legend at the top of the page, see Changing the settings in the Calendar view.

Click any preference in the calendar to open the Details dialog. Note that you can edit or delete preferences that are in Preferred or Declined status (but only if WFM declined the Preferred preference during insertion).

Tip

You might see start/end times in the calendar instead of item names like Shift, Availability, or TOT1. See Changing the view settings.

Changing the view settings

You can change the way you view information in the Calendar view by changing the settings to display only the current month (default) or multiple consecutive months, or display a legend that describes the color-coded statuses.

To change the settings in this view:

1. In the upper-right corner, click Settings.

   The Settings dialog box opens.

2. To change the number of months and how they are displayed, enter a number in these two fields or use the up or down arrows:
   • Number of months to show
   • Number of months to show in one row
3. To display the statuses legend above the calendar, enter a check mark in the Show Legend check box.

   By default, Show start/end times is checked, displaying start/end times in the calendar.

4. To see item names in the calendar (instead of start/end times), clear the Show start/end times check box.
5. Save the settings (or discard them by clicking Cancel).

Tip

Full day items display as Full day when Show start/end times is checked. They display with start/end times if the duration is less than a full day. Day off items are displayed as Day Off.

Filtering the displayed data

You can filter the data displayed in the Calendar view to show only those calendar items that you want to see.

To filter the displayed data in these views:

1. In the upper-right corner, click Filter.

   The Filter dialog box opens.

2. Enter a check mark in the All check box or check only those boxes for the items you want to see.
3. Save the settings (or discard them by clicking Cancel).

Preference statuses and hierarchy

Before scheduling, a preference can be Granted, Declined, or Preferred. After a schedule is built for the dates that include this preference, the status can be Scheduled (appears in the schedule) or Not Scheduled (does not appear in the schedule).

• A Granted preference appears in the schedule, unless it is first removed or unless another preference is added that out-ranks the first one. If this happens, the status of the lower-ranking preference changes to Declined.
• Declined preference does not appear in the schedule unless it is declined in favor of a higher-ranking preference and the higher-ranking preference is later removed before the schedule is built. If this happens the preference goes back to its original status, which can be Granted or Preferred.
• A Preferred preference appears in the schedule if it complies with the scheduling constraints and optimization settings that are configured for your site.

Tip

If you do not see Preferences in the menu bar, then schedule preferences are not enabled for your contact center.