Schedule Layers

Schedule layers let you schedule quickly and easily while preventing gaps from appearing in your schedules when you make changes.

What are layers?

Each agent’s schedule is broken into three distinct groups.

• Bottom layer — Productive: The foundational layer of the agent’s schedule will always be their productive time. If any non-productive events get moved or deleted, the agent’s schedule will fall back on the events on the productive layer.
• Middle layer — Default or Auxiliary: In this layer, you’ll notice events that take precedence over the agent’s productive time. This could include things like meetings, lunch, or breaks. If these events are moved or canceled, the underlying events in the bottom productive layer will fill in the gaps. Depending on your Assembled configuration, this layer may be called either “Default” or “Auxiliary.”
• Top layer — Time off: The agent’s time off will appear at the top, because it takes precedence over both productive time and other events. If it’s moved or deleted, the underlying events will remain.

How do I use layers in Assembled?

If you’d like to see an agent’s schedule broken down into its layers, select their name on the Staffing timeline or select the caret [>] icon next to their name.

In this view, you can change or update events.

Flattened view of the schedule, where you can see that the PTO event appears above an underlying schedule.

Expanded view of the schedule, where you can see the underlying schedule.

Deleting the PTO event reveals the underlying schedule without gaps.

How do I move an event to a different layer?

Events are assigned to different layers based on their event type classification. You can manage this classification by visiting the Event types page under your company settings.

Note: Changing event type classification can also have other effects, such as changing whether the event type is measured towards productive adherence or whether the event type can be requested as time off. If you have questions about event classification, please reach out to our support team for help.

How do I fill existing gaps in my schedule?

Your previous schedules will not have overlapping events, so making changes will leave gaps. For example:

This schedule won’t receive any of the benefits of layers, because it has gaps built into it. To upgrade a single agent’s schedule to work well with layers, select the three dots icon [...] next to their name, and then select Fill gaps.

You can also fill all the gaps on the entire visible area of the staffing timeline by selecting this button near the top left of the page.

If you have a template that you’d like to convert to layered schedules, visit the Templates page, choose your template, and select Fill gaps.

FAQs

How do layers affect metrics?

The flattened schedule, as you see it on the staffing timeline, is the schedule that will be used for any metrics calculations. So if a portion of a productive event is “covered” by an event in another layer (for example, a time off event), that portion will not be used for measuring adherence or other metrics.

Metrics that calculate scheduled time per event will also use the flattened schedule view. For example, we won’t count 8 full hours of phone time if that productive phone layer is interrupted with a 1 hour lunch break — we’ll show 7 productive hours and 1 default hour.

How do layers affect the Assembled → Google Calendar schedule sync?

The flattened schedule, as you see it on the staffing timeline, will sync over to Google Calendar. There will be no overlapping events from Assembled in Google Calendar.

If an external source creates events in Assembled, which layer will they live in?

Any events created in Assembled (including those from external sources like an API, HR integration, or BPO integration) will appear in the layer defined by their event type classification. To make changes, visit your Event types page.

How does this change the way the Assembled API works?

This feature changes how reading schedules (the GET /activities endpoint) works. You may need to make adjustments to your API usage. Read more about how to adapt here.