Add a business unit

Prerequisites
  • Workforce Management > Business Unit > Add permission

Business units allow customers to configure agents who share queues into one or more management units. Business unit configuration in Genesys Cloud includes four tabs: General, Forecasting, Scheduling, and Alternative Shifts. To know more about each configuration, click the corresponding tab. 

General configuration

Select the business unit’s start day of the week, time zone, and division.

Note: After you create the business unit, you cannot change the start day of the week or the time zone. If you need to modify a business unit for these parameters, create a new business unit and configure it to match the previous one.

Forecasting configuration

Select the number of weeks before the forecasted week to determine the specified week’s data.

Note: If the forecast is in the future, the number of weeks that the system uses for source data is the number of historical weeks up to the current day. For example, if today’s date is March 1 and you select to forecast for the week of March 30, the system uses six weeks before March 1. If you select to forecast for the week of January 1, the system uses the six weeks before January 1.
 

Scheduling configuration

This tab contains the feature toggles you can use to set service goal impact, time-off synchronization, and the different schedule generation warnings you can encounter during validation.  

  • In the Activity Smoothing section, use the fields as indicated:
    • Default Activity Smoothing: Indicates how the flexible work plan activities such as break, lunch time, can be distributed through the agent’s shift. The available options in this field are: 
      • Reduce concurrent activities across the Business Unit (Recommended). Select this option, enabled by default when you create a business unit, to ensure that the schedules of agents in the same business unit are updated to minimize the number of concurrent activities. For example, lunch breaks for all agents in the business unit have to be scheduled from 12:00 pm. to 1:00 p.m. The lunch breaks are distributed in a way that best supports the business unit service predictions. This can result in some management units seeing specific times within the flexibility period configured in the work plan having more concurrent activities.
      • Reduce concurrent activities within the Management Unit. Select this option to ensure that the schedules in the same management unit are updated to minimize the number of concurrent activities. For example, break time of agents in the management unit are distributed in such a way that all agents do not get to take their breaks at the same time.
      • Schedule activities to offer the most consistent service goal prediction across the whole schedule. Select this option to ensure that the service levels are consistently maintained and result in more concurrent activities for agents. For example, breaks are distributed in a way that provides the most consistent service predictions. The supervisor assigns breaks in the same time, rather than distributing the activities evenly across the flexibility period.
      • Schedule Variability. Indicates whether to include variance in the agents’ schedules. This process ensures that randomization is added to their schedules and that the same agent does not always receive the same combination of shifts for each schedule run.
  • In the Service Goal Impact section, enter the percentages of the upper and lower service goal differences that you accept for the Service Level, Average Speed of Answer, and Abandonment Rate goals used by automated and self-scheduling features. These percentages apply to the service goals values that you configure in the Service Goal Template.
  • In the Time-Off Synchronization section, select the checkbox to enable time-off synchronization so that, when payable hours for a time-off activity are edited in a schedule, the corresponding time-off request is also updated.
    Note: The time-off activity must have been added to the schedule because of a time-off request getting approved. Time-off activities that are manually added to the schedule do not automatically create a time off request and therefore there is not a time off request for the system to update.
     
  • In the Scheduling Granularity field, select either one minute or five minutes. The default selection is five minutes. When the granularity is set as five minutes, then workforce management rounds off work plans with shifts or activity start times and duration that use the per-minute granularity to the nearest five-minute interval. Depending on the selection in this field, you can set the configurations in work plans. For more information, see Configure the work plan’s daily shifts and Add a work plan configuration.
    Note: Flexible shifts and flexible paid hours continue to operate in five-minute increments. For example, a flexible shift with the start time 8:01 p.m. and end time 8:16 p.m. can start at 8:01 p.m., 8:06 p.m., 0r 8:11 p.m.
  • In Employee development activity codes, you can set an activity code to determine employee development activity codes used for coaching and learning. Valid codes for selection have the category of Meeting, Off Queue or Training (this includes a custom activity code). Genesys Cloud displays the custom activity code in the agents’ scheduling view calendar.
  • In the Validation Messaging Severities section, configure the reporting severity for the business unit’s schedule generation validation warnings. Each message is automatically set to a default; however, you can set your own level of severity.
    • Error: The highest priority that you can set on a message.
    • Information: The lowest priority that you can set on a message.
    • Warning: The priority is higher in severity than Information, but lower than Error.
    • Ignore: The message does not appear during a work plan or schedule generation result. 

Alternative shifts configuration

The Alternative Shifts tab allows you to enable or disable the alternative shifts feature. You can configure the minimum notice or request period for alternative shift trading. The activities that you select in the Activity Category tab always remain in the alternative shifts that are generated. 

Notification configuration

The Notification tab allows you to enable or disable out of adherence notifications and early reminders for scheduled activity categories within your business unit. You can customize the timing of the early reminders, setting them between 1-15 minutes before the next scheduled activity. Out-of-adherence notifications are sent when the agent is not in the correct status at the start of the next scheduled activity.

Use business units to organize agents and apply permissions to meet business needs. Click to know how to add a new business unit.

To add and configure a business unit, perform these steps:

  1. Click Admin.
  2. Under Workforce Management, click Business Units.
  3. Click Add. The Business Units page opens to the General tab.
  4. In the General tab, do the following:
    1. In the Business Unit Name text box, type a name for the business unit.
    2. In the Start Day of the Week list, select the business unit’s starting day.
    3. To change the forecasting time to a time zone other than local time, under Time Zone select the appropriate time zone. 
      Note: The default time zone is the current location’s time zone. When you specify a time zone for your business unit, ensure that the time zone observes Daylight Saving Time (DST). For example, if you use the America/New_York time zone, which accounts for local DST shifts, the data automatically adjusts between UTC-04:00 and UTC-05:00 during March and November, respectively. Genesys recommends this option if you want your data to adjust automatically with daylight saving time. Only use the Eastern Standard Time (EST) designation if the time remains fixed at UTC-05:00 throughout the year, without any adjustment for DST. This setting ensures that the time stays consistent and does not change with the seasons.
    4. To change the division associated with this business unit, click the Division list make the appropriate selection. 
      Note: The default division is Home.
  5. In the Forecasting tab, do the following:
    1. Under Historical Weeks, use the arrows to select, in forecasting, the number of weeks before the forecasted week to determine the specified week’s data. 
  6. In the Scheduling tab, do the following:  
    1. In the Activity Smoothing section, do the following:
      •  In the Default Activity Smoothing field, select the required option. The default selection is already selected.
      • In the Schedule Variability field, indicate if the system can include randomization to the agents’ schedules to ensure that there shift combinations do not repeat.
    2. In the Service Goal Impact section, set the percentage increase and decrease values for service level, average speed of answer, and abandonment rate. For more information about setting service goals, see Service goal templates overview.
    3. Enable the Time-Off Synchronization checkbox, to enable time-off synchronization so that, when payable hours for a time-off activity are edited in a schedule, the corresponding time-off request is also updated.
      Note: The time-off activity must have been added to the schedule because of a time-off request getting approved. Time-off activities that are manually added to the schedule do not automatically create a time off request and therefore there is not a time off request for the system to update.
    4. In the Scheduling Granularity field, select the increment. This field is set to five minutes by default and you can change it to one minute depending on the requirement.
      Note: When you use one-minute granularity and flexible shifts, only the Shift start/end times and min/max paid hours are one-minute granularity. For more flexibility, the recommended selection is to continue with the existing five-minute granularity/increment start times and paid hours logic.
    5. In the Validation Message Severities section, configure the message severities of the validation messages. 
  7. In the Alternative Shifts tab, do the following:
    1. In the Enable Alternative Shifts field, enable the toggle to activate the alternative shifts feature. 
    2. In the Alternative Shift Starts field, set the minimum request period before the alternative shift start time using the Hours and Minutes fields. 
    3. In the Protected Activities section, select the activity categories to include in the alternative shifts.
  8. In the Notifications tab, do the following:
    1. In the Scheduled Activity Notifications field, enable or disable the out of adherence and early reminders for each scheduled activity category.
    2. In the Send Early Reminders field, use the up and down arrows to set the interval of time based on which the early reminders are sent to the agent. For example, if you set this field to 5 minutes, reminders are sent to the agent 5 minutes before the scheduled activity.
  9. Click Save.