Schedule Bidding

WFM's Schedule Bidding feature enables a workforce planner to create schedules with no agent names, and then distribute those schedules to agents via the Web, so that agents can rank their most desired and least desired schedules.

Schedule Bidding enables contact centers to comply with certain labor union regulations that require that the most senior agents, or the most highly-ranked agents, get the schedules they most desire. Even if your contact center does not have these labor regulations, it may still be a process that could provide business value to you. It is a way to empower agents to have more input into the schedules they will be given, and therefore could be used to increase morale within the contact center and reward high-performing agents.

How Bidding Works

Instead of simply assigning schedules to agents, the Supervisor designs and builds a schedule scenario. Then, agents can view the scenario and enter bids for their most desired, and most unwanted, shifts. Finally, the Supervisor can auto-assign or manually assign schedules to agents based on their bids, using a hierarchy system of seniority or rank.

Click links in the summary steps below, to read details.

1: Setting Up Bidding

1. Someone with administration permissions must verify that Schedule Bidding is enabled. To do so, make sure that the AllowBidding configuration option is set to true (the default setting) in the AgentBidding section of the WFM Web application.
2. The Supervisor creates and configures a bidding scenario. Steps include creating a forecast and then a schedule for specific activities and profile agents, then deciding which agents can bid and when.
   
   This opens the bidding process and makes the schedule options visible to agents.
   Important

   During the Schedule Bidding period, a scenario’s site has the status Open for Bidding. Any action or operation that would alter schedules for that site is disabled. This includes (but is not limited to) these actions: direct schedule editing, insertions or deletions, clean up or extraction from the Master Schedule, schedule rebuild or optimization.

2: Bidding on the Schedule

1. Agents examine the bidding scenario options and submit their bids.
2. The bidding period closes when the Bidding End Date arrives. Agents can not access the closed bidding scenario.

3: Resolving the Bids

1. The Supervisor reviews schedule bids. The Supervisor might want to manually modify or assign schedules to agents.
2. The Supervisor starts the auto-assignment wizard. The wizard assigns schedules to agents.
3. The Supervisor reviews results of auto-assignment. The Supervisor might want to manually modify or reassign schedules.

4: Finalizing the Schedule

1. The Supervisor publishes the bidding scenario to the Master Schedule.
2. After all schedules have been assigned to real agents, the Supervisor can run a Schedule Bidding Report.

How Auto Assignment Works in Schedule Bidding

WFM's schedule bidding auto assignment processes bids in the following order:

1. first processes desired (wanted) bids for all agents. After this, all agents without a schedule assigned (who were failed with 'desired' bids) being processed taking into account 'undesired' bids for shifts which were not assigned previously as 'desired' for any agent.

The shifts from 'undesired' bids for Agent3 with priority from -41 to -34 were taken by agents which had them as 'desired'.

Agent is ranked 24 out of 29, so we will have assume that he would have got is 6th choices in the worst case scenario.

The worst case scenario is when agent would has no schedule assigned at all. It can happens, for example, if all his 'desired' bids were taken as 'desired' for agents with higher rank and all the rest (undesired and neutral) would be taken as 'desired' for agents with lower rank.

More detailed clarification: There are two passes in algorithm:

   The loop though all agents (higher rank first) which processes positive (desired) bids only
   The loop through all agents who still have no schedule assigned (i.e. agents which were failed with desired bids or have no desired bids).

In the customer example, agent Joseph Langston was failed with his 4 desired bids (they all were taken by agents with higher rank). Note, the first loop passed through all agents (including those who have lover rank than Joseph Langston). All desired bids were granted when possible.

Joseph Langston's bids were processed in the second pass because he had no schedule assigned after the first pass. The bid with -33 priority was granted to him as the best from available shifts which were left after the first pass. The shifts from bids with priority from -41 to -34 were taken by agents which had them as 'desired' during the first pass.

(It is not the case described in the issue, but just for clarification) If agent has multiple bids with same priority, then the algorithm tries to leave some of them to agents with lower rank and 'desired' bids for such shifts.