Creating and viewing Workforce Management forecasts

You can use forecasting to determine the staffing surplus or deficits throughout a workday, allowing you to determine your staffing needs in advance to improve efficiency. Forecasting can help you determine the need for future staff based on past history, using KPIs (SLA, ASA, or Occupancy) combined with our proprietary algorithms to produce predictive staffing suggestions.

Requirements for creating and viewing Workforce Management forecasts

• Zoom Contact Center license
• Zoom Workforce Management license
• Account owner or admin privileges
• Configured scheduling and activities

How to create a Workforce Management forecast

Note: If you have not set up your schedule groups and queues, follow the instructions in the scheduling groups section before proceeding.

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
2. In the navigation menu, click Workforce Management.
3. Click Forecasting.
4. Click Create Forecast, then click Short Term or Long Term based on the length of forecast you wish to create.
   A pop-up will appear.
5. Short Term forecasting: Enter the following information:
   • Forecast name: Enter a name for your forecast, for example, Forecast for July.
   • Description: Enter a description for your forecast. This field is optional.
   • Number of weeks to forecast: Select the number of weeks you want to include in your forecast. You can choose up to 4 weeks.
   • Forecast week: Select a time period that you want to create a forecast for. Weeks start on Monday and end on Sunday.
   • Historical data period: Select a history time period to base the forecast on. If no time period is selected, all available data will be used. A minimum of 7 days of historical data is required to generate a short-term forecast, and 26 weeks of historical data is required for a long-term forecast. For better forecast accuracy, it is recommended to provide at least 21 days of data for short-term forecasts and at least 104 weeks of data for long-term forecasts.
   • Choose Enter metrics or Use forecast profile. If you choose to use a forecast profile, you must have one created and will select the desired profile from the dropdown menu that appears. If you choose to enter metrics, you will create your own metrics for this forecast using the fields that appear.
   • Add - Select metrics to apply to your forecast section: This section is pre-populated with default values as follows. You can customize these values to change the service level targets. By default, only Service level target and Shrinkage appear here. You can add more metrics by clicking Add metric.
     • Service level target: The Service level is calculated as all calls received in less than the threshold, divided by all calls answered or completed by the queue members. Common modification values: 75%, 30 seconds.
     • Average speed of answer: The time it takes for voice engagements to be answered from the instant a consumer is placed in a queue to the moment an agent answers the engagement. Common modification value: 30 seconds.
     • Occupancy: The percentage of time that agents spend handling engagements vs. waiting for engagements (idle time). Common modification value: 85%
     • Abandon rate: Abandon rate is the percentage of voice calls or messages disconnected by customers before being answered.
     • Shrinkage: For forecasting, this is out of office shrinkage short notice vacations, no shows, illness. If you need 10 agents and have 20% shrinkage, system will recommend 12 staff so when 20% shrink occurs you can still meet your KPI.
     • Percentage of interactions: The percentage of interactions within a specific time duration. Applicable only for Email, Social media or voicemail. This metric is applicable for deferrable channels such as emails and work items.
6. Click Add scheduling groups. Follow the scheduling groups section below for adding scheduling groups to the format.

Import historical data (optional)

Forecasts look at historical interaction information to determine staffing needs for future schedule generation. Follow this section if you want Workforce Management to look at imported data from a third-party contact center software to perform a forecast.

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
2. In the navigation menu, click Workforce Management.
3. Click Forecasting.
4. Click the Historical data tab.
5. Click the Import Historical Data button to import data from another system for forecasting.
6. In the Import historical data from CSV window, drag and drop your CSV file into the upload area or click Choose a file and select your CSV file from your device.
   Note: To create a long term forecast using historical data, ensure your dataset includes at least 26 weeks of data.
7. Click the Select timezone dropdown and select the correct timezone for your data.
8. Under Overwrite existing data, select one:
   • Yes: Existing data will be replaced.
   • No: Existing data will remain (default selected).
9. Ensure your CSV file includes the following required columns:
   • start_time_interval
     • Format: MM/DD/YYYY HH:mm
   • end_time_interval
     • Format: MM/DD/YYYY HH:mm
   • queue_name
     • Name of the queue or skill (must map to Scheduling Group)
   • queue_id (optional)
   • channel
     • Example values: voice, video, chat, email, messaging, work item
   • offered_volume
     • Total number of interactions offered to the queue in interval (numeric only).
   • handled_volume
     • Total number of interactions handled by agents in the interval (numeric only)
   • abandoned_volume
     • Total number of interactions abandoned before being answered in the interval (numeric only)
   • total_abandoned_time
     • sum of queue wait time for abandoned interactions in the interval in seconds (numeric)
   • total_handle_time
     • Total interaction time in seconds (numeric, includes wrap-up time)
   • average_handle_time
     • Average interaction time in seconds (numeric, includes wrap-up time if total not available)
10. (Optional) Click Download import template (CSV) to get a pre-formatted file.
11. Click Run in background.
    The imported historical data will appear in the Historical data logs.
12. Follow the previous section to set up the forecast.
13. Follow the rest of this article to add scheduling groups and generate a forecast.

How to add scheduling groups to a forecast

Now you will add the scheduling groups (that you created previously) to your forecast.

1. Click Add scheduling group.
2. Select the check boxes  of the scheduling groups that you want to create forecasts for. You can select multiple scheduling groups. You can also adjust the Engagement Capacity for messaging queues by clicking the pencil icon  . This determines the number of engagements an agent is expected to handle at a time.
3. Click Add.
   • The forecast will perform a validation of the data available in the scheduling group to determine whether forecasting is possible. If there is insufficient data, that scheduling group will be excluded.
4. Click Generate Forecast when you’ve added all the desired scheduling groups.
   The forecast you created will display a status of Processing. When the status is Ready, you can view the forecast.

How to create a forecasting profile

A forecasting profile allows you to use the same metrics across multiple forecasts, rather than setting up those same metrics each time a forecast is created. To create a forecasting profile, follow the steps below.

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
2. In the navigation menu, click Workforce Management.
3. Click Forecasting.
4. At the top of the page, click the Forecasting profiles tab.
5. Click Create forecasting profile.
   A pop-up will appear.
6. Fill out the information for your forecasting profile.
   • Name: The name of your forecasting profile, up to 36 characters.
   • Description (optional): A description of your forecasting profile, up to 36 characters.
7. Click Save.
   You will be taken to the configuration page for the profile.
8. Click Add scheduling group to profile.
   A pop-up will appear.
9. Configure your forecasting profile.
   • Scheduling group(s): Select the scheduling group(s) you wish to consider for the forecast.
   • Add metrics to scheduling group(s): Add, remove, and configure metrics for your forecasting profile. Service level target and Shrinkage appear by default, but additional metrics can be added by clicking Add metric.
     • Service level target: The Service level is calculated as all calls received in less than the threshold, divided by all calls answered or completed by the queue members. Common modification values: 75%, 30 seconds.
     • Average speed of answer: The time it takes for voice engagements to be answered from the instant a consumer is placed in a queue to the moment an agent answers the engagement. Common modification value: 30 seconds.
     • Occupancy: The percentage of time that agents spend handling engagements vs. waiting for engagements (idle time). Common modification value: 85%
     • Shrinkage: For forecasting, this is out of office shrinkage short notice vacations, no shows, illness. If you need 10 agents and have 20% shrinkage, system will recommend 12 staff so when 20% shrink occurs you can still meet your KPI.
10. Click Confirm.
    The forecasting profile is now created and available for use when creating forecasts.

How to view a forecast

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
2. In the navigation menu, click Workforce Management.
3. Click Forecasting.
4. Click the display name of the forecast you want to view.
   You will see the following information
   • The top portion of the page displays a graph to view the forecasted metric over the specified time period for your selected scheduling groups. Each scheduling group is displayed in its color in the graph.
   • Hover over the graph to display the metric data for each scheduling group.
   • The bottom portion of the page displays the table data rows for your metrics and scheduling group. The table shows all the data for the schedule groups, date/time segments, and metrics.
   • Scroll horizontally and vertically to see the data for each scheduling group and their date and time segment.
5. Use these options to change the data displayed:
   • The vertical (Y) axis displays the selected metric, such as Volume or Average Handle Duration. In the top-right corner of the page, click the drop-down menu to change the metric displayed on the graph.
   • The horizontal (X) axis displays the date and time segments. At the top of the page, click the time period to change the time period displayed on the graph.
   • In the top-left corner, enable the Show totals toggle to see the total data for all scheduling groups included in your forecast request.
   • In the top-left corner, click the drop-down menu to toggle the visibility of individual scheduling groups.
   • Click the bars below the graph to show or hide the date segments on the horizontal axis to see data specific to the dates.

How to generate staffing

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
2. In the navigation menu, click Workforce Management.
3. Click Forecasting.
4. Click the display name of a forecast that has a Completed status.
5. Click the View forecast tab.
6. Click View staffing.
   The graph will update with the following data for each scheduling group:
   • Total number of staff (agents) needed for the week.
   • Number of staff (agents) needed each day and for each time segment.
   • The table will show each scheduling group by date, and the number of agents needed for each time segment.

Note: You can use the same options when viewing a forecast to customize the data displayed in the staffing recommendation. Once you have generated staffing, the status of your forecast will change to as Complete.