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. In Workforce management, click Schedule in the navigation bar and select Schedule.
2. Click the CSV icon and select Export Schedule.
3. Choose the Published schedule or the Draft version, pick the date range, and export.

The published-or-draft choice is the one to get right. Sending somebody a draft is how a team ends up working to a schedule that was never agreed.

Import one

1. Click the CSV icon on the same page and select Import schedule.
2. Click Schedule import template. Two files download: the template itself, and a file of task field keys holding the IDs of your workstreams, general tasks and time off reasons.
3. Fill the template. Agent names and email addresses have to match Zendesk WFM exactly, and the fields are case-sensitive.
4. Test with one week and a few people, and check the result in the scheduler.
5. Upload the file and click Import schedule for the rest.

That second downloaded file is the one people miss. Task names typed by hand do not match; the IDs from the keys file do.

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 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