Understanding advanced capacity splitting – Assembled

Introduction

Advanced capacity splitting is designed to provide a more accurate calculation of agent hours and staffing across different queues and channels. By understanding and utilizing this feature, workforce managers can ensure that staffing and scheduling are optimized for efficiency and service level agreement (SLA) attainment.

*Please note this setup requires backend configuration from Assembled. Please reach out to support@assembledhq.com or your CSM to enable this.

Understanding key metrics

Across the Assembled, you will see the following metrics. How we calculate these metrics will vary with advanced capacity splitting so it's important to understand what they are and how they impact reporting.

• Scheduled + Actual hours → Time the agents worked during the specified interval ( metric definitions)
• Scheduled + Actual staffing → The number of agents that worked during the specified interval

Common use cases

Here are two common use cases that can be helpful in determining if this feature is right for you.

• Use Case 1: Efficient event type management

  • Goal: Simplify management by ensuring an agent's time is allocated only to specific channels and queues they are trained for, reducing the number of event types needed.
  • Benefits: - Create fewer event type combinations tailored to agent skills.
    • Manage a compact set of event types covering broader queues.
    • Ensure accuracy by aligning agents' scheduled work with their actual queue associations, preventing misallocation of time.

• Use Case 2: Accurate time distribution in blended events

  • Goal: Reflect the real-life distribution of an agent's time across different queues and channels during blended events in both staffing timelines and reports.
  • Benefits: - Ensure staffing levels and time reporting accurately mirror how agents split their time in blended events.
    • Improve workforce management insights on queue staffing needs based on actual time spent by agents in each queue or channel.

• Use Case 3: Precise capacity allocation

  • Goal: Allocate capacity only to channels and queues actually worked by an agent, ensuring a true reflection of channel capacity.
  • Benefits: - Prevent capacity allocation to channels an agent is not associated with during an event.
    • Ensure only channels related to the worked queue receive capacity, accurately reflecting the agent's actual work distribution.

Set up

To accurately calculate these metrics, three main factors are considered. For successful implementation, users must ensure:

1. Queue Channel Mapping: queues have the correct channels assigned in their settings.

   • Determines the association of queues to channels.
   • Defined in Settings>Queues and exclusions.
     __* Note this is just one example, but queues could have multiple channels associated

2. Agent Profile: agents are updated to reflect the latest queues agents work.

   • Indicates the queues/channels an agent is trained to work.
   • Defined in _People. _

3. Blended Event Mapping: events are mapped to both channel(s) and queue(s).

   • Defines the association of event types to multiple queues and channels.
   • Productive events must have at least one channel or queue associated. Unmapped productive events will be ignored by metrics using advanced capacity splitting.
   • Defined in Settings> Event types.* Note this is just one example, but events could in theory only have one channel or one queue

Algorithm

The algorithm for advanced capacity splitting follows a step-by-step process:

1. Identify Productive Events: Only productive events are split. All other events, including auxiliary productive events, are fully counted toward every channel and queue.
2. Identify Overlapping Queues and Channels: Matches the queues and channels in the blended productive event to the agent's profile.
3. Filter Overlapping Queue and Channel Combinations: Discards any pairing of queue and channel that cannot be found in your configured queue channel mappings.
4. Calculate Time Worked in Each Queue and Channel: Divides the agent's time evenly among the remaining queues and channels.

This process ensures that staffing and hours are split accurately across queues and channels, reflecting the true capacity.

Special cases: parent queues

Parent queues are queues that can receive ticket traffic, but are also aggregates of queues. For a queue to be a parent queue it needs to contain at least one queue. Parent queues are configured in Settings → Queues and exclusions.

• An agent capable of working a parent queue does not mean that agent is able to work that parent queue’s child queues.
• If a blended event contains a parent queue and any child queues, then the scheduled hours and staffing are equally split across them.
• When viewing data on the parent queue, Assembled aggregates the metric values from the parent and the child queues it contains.
• If your parent queue set up does not have rules at the parent queue level, and your goal is to split capacity at only the child queue level and aggregate at the parent queue, only assign child queues to the event types.

Configuration constraints & implications

• The advanced capacity splitting feature requires specific configurations to be valid, including the mapping of events to queues/channels and ensuring that agents are trained for the queues/channels included in the events they are scheduled for.
• Activating advanced capacity splitting impacts several reports within Assembled, including staffing timelines, heatmaps, forecasted vs actual reports, and team performance metrics. It's crucial for users to maintain up-to-date queue and channel mappings in the People page to ensure accurate reporting.

Example

Let's walk through an example:

Inputs

Step 1: Find the overlapping queues and channels between the productive event and agent profile

• ✅queue_billing, chat channel: will be a part of the overlapping queues and channels.
• ✅queue_billing, phone channel: will be a part of the overlapping queues and channels.
• ❌queue_refunds: will not be part of the overlapping queues and channels. Even though the agent has queue_refunds in their profile, since the event does not contain it, it is not part of the overlapping queues.
• ❌queue_account, phone channel: will not be part of the overlapping queues and channels. While the blended event lists phone as a valid channel, queue_account does not support phone, so only
• ✅queue_account, chat channel: will be a part of the overlapping queues and channels.

Step 2: Calculate the time worked in each queue by dividing the time worked across each overlapping queue

• We have 2 overlapping queues, so we’ll be dividing the time by 2.
• 1 hour worked in the blended event results in 30min given to each queue.

Step 3: Calculate the time worked in each channel by dividing the time worked in each queue across the channels associated with each queue using the queue channel mapping

• queue_billing has 30 minutes to distribute among its 2 channels so each channel receives 15 minutes.
• queue_account has 30 minutes to distribute among its 1 channel so channel chat receives 30 minutes.

Results: In the table below, find a summary of how the scheduled hours and staffing will appear in Assembled

“Basic” refers to the default behavior and “Advanced” to the advanced splitting behavior when the feature is enabled.

*This is because the custom event type in our example is mapped to both queues and both channels.