Special Days

As a manager, you regularly need to forecast staffing plans for your employees. These forecasts use historical data to predict the level of staffing you may need for future shifts.

But what happens when you have days that don't quite follow the standard, such as holidays, training days, company or product promotions? What if there are days you know will not suit your future staffing needs?

WFM gives you the ability to define certain days as special days, allowing you to be more flexible when forecasting a staffing plan. You can exclude past days from a forecast, adjust the volume for a future day, or simply choose not to forecast for a future day.

Create a Special Day

You can create special days for all skills, or specific ones. If you are creating a special day for specific skills, you can add adjust your forecast differently for different skills, in the same special day, or even exclude skills, or decide not to forecast for those skills.

To create a special day:

1. Click the app selector and select WFM.

2. Go to Forecasting > Special Days.

3. In the calendar, select the day you want to exclude from your forecast.

4. Enter a description, detailing why this day is being defined as a special day.

5. Define the Start and End dates of the special day, as well as the Time Zone. You can define a time period that spans several days.

6. Select whether you are creating this special day for All skills or Specific skills.

7. If you selected Specific skills, in the Special Day Parameters, from the Skills drop down list, select the skills for the special day.

   If you want to apply different parameters to different skills, click Add skill at the bottom of the screen once you have finished defining the parameters for these skills.

8. If your special day is in the future, you can select one of the following:

   • Do not forecast for this day: the Forecaster will not create a schedule forecast for this day.

     This is useful for upcoming holidays, or days when your organization will be closed.

   • Adjust forecast: The Forecaster will create a schedule forecast for this day. You can Decrease volume or Increase volume for this day by a defined percentage.

     This is useful if you know there will be an increase in call volume due to a marketing campaign, or any other reason.

   Although it is possible to select either of these options if you defined a day in the past, keep in mind, you cannot forecast a past day.

9. You can choose to Exclude this day from future forecasts for any special day, whether past or future. This day will not be taken into consideration when forecasting for future staffing plans.

   This is useful for days with unique circumstances that will not be repeated, such as bad weather resulting in a shutdown.

10. Click Save.

    The special day will appear in the calendar, as well as in the Forecasting Wizard.

    When creating a forecast, past days will be marked in the Historical Data step, while future days will appear in the forecast itself, with a special day indicator.

Managing Special Days

The Special Days calendar, gives you a quick view of all created special days.

At a glance, you can tell whether the day was applied to all skills, or only specific skills, the time range for the day, and whether the special day overflows into another time zone.

In addition, at the bottom of the Special Days page is a grid which displays a list of all special days for the month you are viewing in the calendar, and who they were created by.

Click on any of these days to view or edit the parameters.