Schedule Optimization Plans

Use Schedule Optimization to improve the net staffing without effort. With one click of a button, you can improve the productivity of your workforce.

If you created schedule optimization rules, an optimization plan is generated on designated recurring days. Plans generated by rules will suggest optimizations only for the current day. You can also generate a single plan at any point. This single plan can be generated for current as well as future dates.

The generated plan suggests schedule adjustments to the break activities. Use the plan to improve your team's net staffing and productivity for rest of the day or even future dates.

On the Schedule Optimization Plans page, you can review each active planClosed Optimization plans that you can review and optimize before they expire and see the last 100 plans. Click on a plan for more details about the activity adjustments and how you can improve the net staffing. If the status of the plan is Ready for review, click Optimize inside the plan to accept it.

You can learn more about Schedule Optimization with these videos:

  • Overview: Discover how the Schedule Optimization feature in CXone WFM can enhance your workforce productivity with just a single click.

  • Rules: Learn how to set up schedule optimization rules and receive a daily plan that you can use.

  • Plans: Learn how to review and optimize plans, understand the improvement rate, and track plan status.

This feature is only available for users with the CXone WFM Advanced license.

You must have these permissions to:

If you cannot access the page, check with your administrator. The administrator can find these permissions in CXone. Go to Admin > Security Settings > Roles and Permissions and select the role.

You need to be assigned to the scheduling units in the rule to view the plan. If another manager creates a rule for units that aren't assigned to you, you will get notifications when the plans are ready. However, when you enter the Optimization Plans page, you won't be able to view them.

Review Optimization Plan Table

Click on a plan to review it and see more details. When you review an active plan, click Optimize to change the schedules. Notifications are sent to agents that their schedule was affected.

At a glance, you can see for each plan:

  • Created by: You can see the name of the rule that generated the plan or who manually generated it .

  • Scheduling unit: Each plan can optimize one scheduling unit, even if the upcoming shift has other units scheduled too.

  • Agents affected: How many agent schedules will be affected by the optimization. Improving the net staffing might require adjusting only part of the schedules.

    Let's say your scheduling unit has 100 agents, but only 60 agents scheduled for that day. The optimization plan was generated, and needs to adjust the break activities for 20 agents.

    In this case, you see 20 of 60 in the Agents affected column.

    Keep in mind, the total number of agents doesn't include agents that:

    • Aren't scheduled to work that day, or if they aren't scheduled with the rule's break activity.

      For example, the rule only adjusts Lunch breaks, and some agents only have Breakfast breaks. Their schedule won't be listed or adjusted.

    • Aren't assigned to the Can be Scheduled attribute on the Set Up Employees page.

    Agents that aren't assigned to skills are included in the plan. However, their schedule won't be adjusted because they aren't assigned to a skill.

  • Generated on: The time and day the plan was generated. You define when they get generated in the optimization rule. Generating the plan can take up to 15 minutes. So if you defined 9:00, the plan can be ready between 9:00 and 9:15.

  • Optimize from: The plan adjusts the break activities for agents in the scheduling unit. It is optimized from the selected time until the end of the day. The plan expires in one hour or at the start time, whichever occurs first. Once a plan expires, you won't be able to optimize it.

    Let's say a plan was generated at 9:30, and you selected to optimize schedules from 10:00.

    When the plan gets generated, it adjusts the break activities from 10:00. If an agent has a break between 9:50 and 10:20, that break won't be included in the optimization.

    Because 10:00 is also the expiration time, you won't be able to optimize after that. It will be active between 9:30-10:00.

    If the selected Optimize from time was 11:00, and the plan was generated at 9:30 then the plan will expire at 10:30.

  • Improvement: How much you can improve the net staffing using the plan. The rate is measured by the full-time equivalent (FTE)Closed A unit that indicates the workload of an agent number of agents.

    The net staffing improves when intervals with opposite net staffing balance each other. The improvement rate calculation is a is follows:

    The optimizer sums the net staffing in each interval (in absolute value), before and after optimization. The improvement rate is the difference between the sum before optimization and after:

    (Sum before optimizing in absolute value) – (Sum after optimizing in absolute value) = (Improvement rate)

    For example, you need for each interval 50 agents during the day (required agents: 50):

    • 12:00–12:15: 55 agents scheduled. You are overstaffed by 5 agents (+5).

    • 12:15–12:30: 46 agents scheduled. You are understaffed by 4 agents (-4).

    |5|+|–4| = 9

    The sum of both before optimizing (in absolute value) is: 9 agents.

    Now, the optimizer moves some of the break activities. The optimized schedule will be:

    • 12:00–12:15: 51 agents scheduled. You are overstaffed by 1 agent (+1).

    • 12:15–12:30: 50 agents scheduled. You aren't understaffed (0).

    |1|+ 0 = 1

    The sum of both after optimizing (in absolute value) is: 1 agent.

    The improvement rate will be 8 agents. Why?

    9 (sum before optimizing) – 1 (sum after optimizing) = 8.

  • Status: The status of the listed plan.

    • Icon of Ready status Preparing plan...: The plan is generating.

    • Icon of Ready status Ready for review: The plan is generated, and you can use it to optimize the schedule.

    • Optimized: The plan was optimized.

    • Expired: The plan was expired.

    • No optimization found: The plan wasn't able to improve or balance the schedule. You cannot optimize the schedule with this plan.

    • Icon of warning status Failed to create plan: There was an error while generating the plan.

      When a plan is generated and you see the status Failed to create plan, there can be a couple of reasons. In most cases, you can see why it failed in the Details column.

      Common reasons the plan fails to generate:

      • All agents in the scheduling unit don't have a schedule for this day.

      • No required staffing data found.

        This will most likely happen when there's no forecast data. Without the required staffing data, the plan won't have the optimal net staffing to consider.

      • No relevant activities to optimize.

        For example, the rule is defined to optimize the Breakfast and Lunch activities. However, the agents are assigned to Break activities in the generated plan. In this case, the plan doesn't have activities that can be adjusted.

      • All agents in the scheduling unit aren't assigned to a weekly rule.

      • The schedule for this day isn't published.

    • Icon of warning status Failed to optimize: There was an internal error while optimizing. You can enter the plan and try optimizing again.

Generate a Single Optimization Plan

Use Optimization Rules to generate a daily plan. However, you can also generate a single optimization plan at any point on the Optimization Plans page. Select the scheduling units, activities, and when you want to optimize, and a plan gets generated right away.

A newly generated plan expires when the first of these occurs:

  • One hour after the plan was generated. If the plan was generated at 9:00, it won't be available for optimization after 10:00.

  • At the selected adjustment times.

    For example, if you choose to optimize today's schedule starting at 10:00, the generated plan will adjust break activities based on the start time. The plan was generated at 9:30 with Optimize from time at 10:00 will still expire at 10:00.

To generate a single optimization plan:

  1. Click the app selector and select CXone WFM.

  2. Go to Schedule Optimization > Plans.

  3. Click Generate Plan.

  4. Select the Scheduling units and the Activities that are included in the optimization plan.

  5. Under Optimizes schedules on, select the day (can be a future date) and time that are adjusted. The generated plan adjusts the selected break activities for all agents in the scheduling unit that start after this time. A plan is generated for each selected scheduling unit.

    The time range starts on the selected date and time and lasts until the end of the day.

  6. Click Generate.

    Once the plan is generated, it becomes an active planClosed Optimization plans that you can review and optimize before they expire until the date and time defined in Optimizes schedules from. After that, it expires. Or it expires one hour after the plan is ready, whichever occurs first.

Troubleshoot Optimization

When an activity code in a rule is deleted, the rule still generates plans on the selected day and time. However, you won't see data for that activity in the plan because it doesn't exist. The data for the other activities are still generated.

Let's say you're looking at a plan with a deleted activity code in the rule. In the Schedule Adjustments tab, you see a list of all activities in the shift. The activities that were deleted display -- instead of data.

If all activity codes are deleted, the rule won't generate plans.

There are a couple of scenarios:

  • A scheduling unit in a rule is deleted: If at least one scheduling unit in the rule is still active, the rule generates plans. However, the generated plans will be for those scheduling units only.

    For example, you create an optimization rule for two scheduling units: New York and California. If New York was deleted, the rule still generates plans for the California unit.

  • All scheduling units in a rule are deleted: When all scheduling units in the rule are deleted, the rule status is Failed. In this case, the rule won't generate plans.

    You can activate the rule by adding a scheduling unit to the rule.

    If there are no existing rules in the rule, you will see -- in the Scheduling Unit column of the rule.

The Required metric displays how many agents you need scheduled for that interval. However, the optimization plans show data only for the agents in that scheduling unit.

Let's say you have a shift that requires three scheduling units. For all the required staffing shift is 100 agents. This is the value you see in Schedule Manager and Intraday. They display the total number of agents you need.

When you look optimization plan, it shows the required staffing for only one scheduling unit. That's why the number is different.

To see the data in an optimization plan, you need a couple of permissions:

  • Permissions: In CXone, each role has permissions to which pages they can access and manage. See optimization permissions for each role.

    For example, a manager role might have permission to see data on a page, while the supervisor role can also edit the data.

  • View: Every user can have a view assigned to them that restricts the agents they can see. You won't be able to open an optimization plan if at least one agent in the plan isn’t assigned to your view. This is the case even when you're assigned to the required roles.

    Let's say a plan was generated for a scheduling unit. Out of the 100 agents in this scheduling unit, you can view 90. If the plan optimizes one of the 10 agents you can't see, you won’t be able to open it.

    You need these permissions to open plans and optimize. You might get notifications that a plan is ready, but you won't be able to open it.