Setting up locations and shifts

A location carries a time zone and operational hours. Shifts are what stop schedule building being manual.

A location carries a time zone and operational hours. Shifts are what stop schedule building being manual.

Set them up

1. In Workforce management, click the settings icon in the sidebar and select Locations.
2. Enter a unique Location name and pick the Time zone.
3. Set Operational hours: Open 24/7, or Specific hours with the days and times.
4. Set the Automatic shift requirements if you are going to use automatic shifts.
5. Create the shifts for the patterns you use, and assign teams to their location. An agent belongs to one location and no more.

One caveat that saves an argument later: the operational hours and the automatic shift requirements only do anything when you use automatic shifts. Fixed shifts override them, so on a fixed-shift schedule these fields are documentation rather than logic.

There is no holiday list on a location. What differs per country in this product is the time zone and the hours; the calendar is not modelled here at all.

One location per country, at least

Time zones and working hours 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 time zone. Either give them the right location or accept that their schedule will be built against somebody else's clock.

Shifts 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