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 or proposes extra hours for eligible agents. 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 NiCE 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 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 NiCE 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.

  • Optimization Times: The plan adjusts the break activities for agents in the scheduling unit. 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 Optimization Times 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.

  • Optimization Type: Indicates whether the plan is for Lunch and Breaks or Extra Hours.

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 Optimization Time at 10:00 will still expire at 10:00.

Optimization with a Break Policy

Break Policies allow managers to schedule agent breaks efficiently while keeping staffing levels optimal. By defining the break policy, managers can comply with the organization’s guidelines regardless of shift length, providing greater flexibility for adjusting breaks within the scheduling optimizations.

How Optimizer Works with Break Policy

  • Plans are optimized based on the shift length defined in the break policies. Time off is not considered when calculating the shift length. For example, a 9-hour shift with 1-hour PTO will be considered an 8-hour shift for optimization. If time-off is scheduled at the beginning or end of the shift, it is valid for optimization. However, if time off is scheduled in the middle of the shift, it is not optimized.

  • Breaks in the plan should match the range defined in the break policy. For example, if a 30-minute break is approved between the 3rd and 5th hour of the shift:

    • If the break in the schedule is after 2 hours, it will not be matched.

    • If the break in the schedule is after 3 hours, it will be matched.

    • If the break in the schedule is after 4 hours, it will be matched.

  • The activity codes of the break must match the break policy. This ensures that the correct type of break is scheduled.

  • The plan must have the same number of breaks as defined in the break policy to ensure consistency.

  • Breaks can be moved or optimized if there's an open slot available. If there's a closed type activity, such as a meeting, the break cannot be moved.

  • If there's a gap between two shifts, they are treated as separate shifts for break planning. Each shift will be matched to a break policy based on the shift length. For example, a morning shift that is 4 hours can be matched to break policy A, and a later night shift can be matched to break policy B.

  • If no break policies are defined, the optimization will be based on daily/weekly rules.

To generate a single optimization plan:

  1. Click the app selector icon of app selector and select WFM.

  2. Go to Schedule Optimization > Plans.

  3. Click Generate Plan.

  4. Select the Scheduling units and the Optimize Activities:

    • Lunch and Breaks: Select the activities you want to include from the Activities dropdown.

    • Extra Hours: Select the Extra hours activity from the dropdown. The dropdown lists activities with the Overtime attribute enabled. Optionally, set a plan-level maximum to limit the total extra hours added for the scheduling unit.

      You can optimize either Lunch and Breaks or Extra Hours in a single plan, not both together.

  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 From . A plan is generated for each selected scheduling unit.

    The time range starts on the selected date and time as defined in From and lasts until the time defined in To. This allows you to have different rules for different activities, for different times in a day. You can define multiple plans and choose the one that suits your requirements the best.

  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.

Extra Hour Optimization

This feature is only available with the WFM Advance license.

Extra hours optimization helps you cover staffing gaps by proposing extra hours for eligible agents. The optimizer evaluates interval-level staffing gaps, agent skills, multiskill leverage, and daily and weekly hour limits, and suggests extending shifts at the start or end where it has the greatest impact.

How Extra Hours are Applied

  • Extra hours are added at the beginning or end of an Open shift only.

  • Extra hours are not added if there is an Out of Office activity at the start or end of the shift.

  • The selected extra hours activity must have the Overtime attribute enabled.

Extra hours optimization does not change how Lunch and Break optimization works.

Agent Configuration

Only agents with extra hours settings configured are eligible. For eligible agents, you define:

  • Minimum length of extra hours

  • Maximum extra hours per day

  • Maximum extra hours per week

These settings can use date range–specific rules for temporary overrides. The optimizer makes sure agents do not exceed their daily and weekly extra hours limits.

The optimizer respects the extra hours limits you define and standard scheduling constraints such as hours of operation and agent availability. It does not use rotation rules for extra hours plans.

Reviewing Extra Hours Plans

When you open an extra hours plan:

  • The Extra Hours Recommendations tab shows the extra hours proposed for each eligible agent.

  • The Staffing by Skill tab shows how the optimization changes staffing by skill.

Click Optimize to apply the proposed extra hours to agent schedules.

Keep in mind:

  • If two plans exist for the same scheduling unit with overlapping time periods, optimizing one cancels the other.

  • Extra hours added for a future time must be at least 30 minutes ahead of the current time.

 

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 NiCE 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.