About Shift Trading configuration

The Shift Trading Configuration view allows administrators to set up the options that are appropriate for their call center. From the Interaction Optimizer Home page, in the Configuration area select Shift Trading. The Shift Trading tab opens.

Enable Shift Trading

Use the Enable Shift Trading check box to enable or disable all shift trading functionality for the scheduling unit. When you leave this box unchecked, the Schedule Trading tab will not appear in an agent's client and they cannot add or change trades. If Shift Trading is enabled, and you then disable this check box, Optimizer does not delete any existing trade requests, but the requests are no longer visible until you re-enable the check box.

Trades must be at least this many hours in the future

Use the up and down controls to define how much time is needed to give agents and administrators proper warning about a change to the schedule that resulted from a schedule trade.

Depending on the number you set here, agents cannot create a trade request where the first possible trade occurs less than number of hours in the future. Optimizer checks hourly for expired trades and changes the trade status accordingly. Optimizer validates trade times before saving it as a matched trade to confirm that the chosen times are not far enough in the future that the save will fail.

Minimum trade length (in hours)

Use the up and down controls to protect from agents trading a block of time that is too short. When the agent creates a trade request, Optimizer checks the length and will not save invalid lengths.

Minimum consecutive block of time left after partial trade (in hours)

Use the up and down controls to set the lowest number of consecutive hours allowed to remain in an agent's shift after he or she has been granted a partial trade request. This setting is designed to protect an agent from having a very short shift after making a trade. The block of time left refers to the part of the agent’s shift that is left after the trade. For example, if an agent has a 6 hour shift and trades away 4 hours, then he or she will be left with a 2-hour shift.

Purge expired trades from database once they are this old (in days)

Use the up and down controls to define when to purge old trade requests is designed to reduce the size of the database.  Any trade request that is in the expired or canceled status after the configured number of days will be deleted from the database.

Partial day trade recommendation window (in hours)

Use the up and down controls to determine how close to the original request any potential trades must be before being shown to other agents. For example, assume Agent A's shift begins at 8:00 a.m. and he wants to take off from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. for a doctor's appointment. Setting the partial day trade recommendation window to 2 hours, the system only considers trades that begin at 8:00 a.m. and end between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. A possible trade ending at 3:00 p.m. will not be shown in the list of trades from which the agent can pick because the difference is more than 2 hours from 12:00 p.m.

Require admin approval for trades that contain a partial shift

Select this check box to automatically set any partial day trades to Pending status until an administrator approves or denies the partial day trade. Clear this check box to direct Optimizer to automatically approve partial day trades that meet matching and rule criteria.

Agent matching criteria

Select the matching criteria by which agents can trade. Depending on your selection, agents will only be allowed to trade with agents in the same scheduling unit, agents with the same staff type, agents in the same coverage group, agents that have the same ACD workgroups, or agents that have the same ACD workgroups and skills. Once set, neither agents nor administrators can override the criteria to create requests with non-matching agents.

If you chose the Agents that belong to the same ACD workgroups criteria, matches only include workgroups that have queues, and will receive interactions. If an agent belongs to additional workgroups that do not have queues, the group of agents with which they can trade does not change.

Activity type rules

Activity type rules determine what to do with each activity when one agent's schedule is traded with another agent's schedule. Select an action for each activity type. Stays with schedule, Cannot be traded, and Replaced with ACD.

• Stays with schedule. The activity given by one agent is included in the schedule received by the other agent.  

• Replaced with ACD. The activity given by one agent is not included in the schedule received by the other agent. Instead, the time range receives an ACD activity.  

• Cannot be traded. An agent cannot trade any schedule range that includes this activity. For example, if an agent attempts to trade a Time Off activity, he or she receives an error message and Optimizer will not complete the trade.  

Note: Time off is restricted from trade requests. Therefore, Time Off and Vacation are permanently set to Cannot be traded.

Admin Review column

Check this column if you do not want to automatically approve a matched trade. Instead, Optimizer sets matched trades to Pending status until the administrator approves or denies the match.  

Warning column

Check this column if you want to present a warning to the agent whenever this activity type is included in any part of the shift to be traded.  

Warning Message column

If the Warning column contains a check mark for the activity type, you must also enter a warning message in this column. If you check the Warning column but do not add a warning message, Optimizer will not save the configuration. These warnings appear to the agent when he or she attempts to trade a shift that includes this activity type.