Importing and exporting schedules

Getting schedules in and out. Useful for migration and for the people who will not open another tool.

Getting schedules in and out. Useful for migration and for the people who will not open another tool.

Export one

1. Open the schedule for the period.
2. Export it.
3. Share it, or use it in another system.

Import one

1. Prepare the file in the expected format.
2. Test with one week and a few people.
3. Check the result in the scheduler.
4. Import the rest.

Test on one week

Always. A column mapped wrongly across a quarter is a cleanup job, and the schedule is what people are working to.

Where export earns its place

• Payroll or HR systems that need the hours.
• Managers who want a spreadsheet rather than another login.
• A record of what was published, before changes.

An exported schedule goes stale immediately

The moment somebody swaps a shift, the file is wrong. Anybody working from it is working from a snapshot, so date it clearly and say where the live version is.

This is how people end up working the wrong shift.

Import for migration, not routine

Bringing a year of rota from a previous system, yes. Building schedules in a spreadsheet and importing them weekly means you are not really using the product, and the forecast is doing nothing.

It contains personal data

Who works when, and often absence. Treat the file accordingly and agree where it may live.

See also

• Generating and publishing a schedule
• Connecting Google Calendar to Zendesk WFM
• How the Zendesk WFM schedule works