Plan requirement
| Subscription | Any plan |
| Also required | Workforce Management or Workforce Engagement Management |
| Access | Agent |
Reading a forecast in Workforce Management, and the weekly comparison against reality that makes it trustworthy.
Look at it
- In Workforce management, click Forecasting in the navigation bar and select Active forecast.
- Pick the period with the day, week, month and year buttons at the top right, and step through time with the arrows at the top left.
- Read the two charts: Inbound volume and Required staffing. Table expands either one into the numbers behind it.
- Tick the workstreams you want to see. Ten can be on screen at once, each in its own colour, and the folder icon groups several into one combined forecast.
- Compare last week's forecast against what happened.
The CSV icon at the bottom right exports the workstreams you have selected, which is how the comparison against reality gets done in a spreadsheet. The options menu on a workstream recalculates its forecast; the recalculate icon does all of them, and it accepts a request every five minutes.
Not every agent gets to this page. You have to be a Zendesk WFM admin, or have been given permission to open Active forecast; without it the page is not there to open.
The comparison is the point
A forecast on its own is a prediction. A forecast next to what happened is feedback, and it is what turns the tool into something people plan around.
Ten minutes each week, and after two months you know how much to trust it.
Read the shape, not the total
A daily total that is right with the wrong shape produces a schedule that is understaffed at eleven and overstaffed at four. The interval curve is what you are staffing against.
Watch the peaks specifically
Being a little wrong in a quiet hour costs nothing. Being wrong at the peak is where queues form and customers notice.
Judge the forecast on its peaks rather than on its average error.
Adjust for what it cannot know
A campaign, a launch, a known incident. Those need a manual adjustment, and the real work is finding out about them in advance rather than making the adjustment.
A standing arrangement with marketing is worth more than any setting here.
Zendesk is building something for exactly this. Forecast scenarios let you keep several forecasts per workstream and adjust one for a campaign or a holiday before activating it, so you can try a change rather than overwrite the live figure. It is in early access, and each workstream can hold one active system-created scenario and one active imported one. Ask us if you want your account enrolled.
Note why you adjusted
Otherwise next quarter's review cannot tell an intervention from an error, and the same discussion happens again.
Share it with the team
Agents who can see what is expected understand why the rota looks as it does. It changes a schedule from something imposed into something explained.
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