Setting up locations and shifts

Locations carry hours, holidays and time zone. Shift templates are what stop schedule building being manual.

Locations carry hours, holidays and time zone. Shift templates are what stop schedule building being manual.

Set them up

1. Create a location for each place with its own hours or holidays.
2. Set its time zone, working hours and public holidays.
3. Create shift templates for the patterns you actually use.
4. Assign teams to their location.

One location per country, at least

Holidays and time zones differ, and a schedule built on the wrong ones is wrong for everybody at that site. This is the setting that makes multi-country scheduling work at all.

Remote workers need a decision

Somebody working from another country has their own holidays and time zone. Either give them the right location or accept that their schedule will be built against somebody else's calendar.

Shift templates save the real time

Early, mid, late, weekend. Building a week from templates is minutes; placing every shift by hand is an afternoon, every week.

Include breaks in the template

A shift without them schedules eight hours of continuous work, and adherence then measures people against something impossible. Put breaks in the pattern rather than adding them afterwards.

Keep templates few

Four or five patterns covers most operations. A template per person is not a template, and it removes the benefit entirely.

Holidays a year ahead

Per location. A missing holiday staffs a day nobody is working, and next year's forecast learns from it.

See also

• Managing your Zendesk WFM account settings
• How the Zendesk WFM schedule works
• Creating and managing teams