Workforce for Contact Center

The Workforce for Contact Center module (CrestApps.OrchardCore.Workforce.ContactCenter) joins the Workforce module to the Contact Center. Workforce never references the Contact Center; this module references both. It reads the Contact Center's interval statistics and agent state log.

The admin screens are described in the User Manual: Contact Center Adherence and Contact Center Forecasting.

Feature ID	Name	Depends on
CrestApps.OrchardCore.Workforce.ContactCenter	Workforce for Contact Center	CrestApps.OrchardCore.Workforce, CrestApps.OrchardCore.ContactCenter.Agents
CrestApps.OrchardCore.Workforce.ContactCenter.SignInPunches	Contact Center Sign-in Punches	Workforce for Contact Center, CrestApps.OrchardCore.Workforce.TimeClock
CrestApps.OrchardCore.Workforce.Forecasting	Workforce Forecasting	Workforce for Contact Center, CrestApps.OrchardCore.Workforce.ShiftPlanning, CrestApps.OrchardCore.ContactCenter.IntervalStatistics
CrestApps.OrchardCore.Workforce.Intraday	Workforce Intraday	CrestApps.OrchardCore.Workforce.Forecasting
CrestApps.OrchardCore.Workforce.Adherence	Workforce Adherence	Workforce for Contact Center, CrestApps.OrchardCore.Workforce.ShiftPlanning, CrestApps.OrchardCore.ContactCenter.IntervalStatistics
CrestApps.OrchardCore.Workforce.ContactCenter.TimeTracker	Contact Center Time Tracker	Workforce for Contact Center, CrestApps.OrchardCore.ContactCenter.IntervalStatistics, CrestApps.OrchardCore.TimeTracker

Agents and workers

An agent and a worker are the same person when they share a user account. AgentWorkerService lists the agents with their worker, finds the agent of a worker, and creates a worker for an agent (EnsureWorkerAsync, CreateMissingAsync). A catalog handler on AgentProfile creates the worker when an agent is created; it doesn't run on updates, so an agent's frequent presence saves never look the worker up. Agents created before the feature was turned on get their worker from Workforce > Contact Center Agents, which can put the new workers in a team.

Sign-in punches

SignInPunchHandler is a Contact Center event handler (IContactCenterEventHandler, delivered at least once through the Contact Center outbox). On an AgentStateChanged event:

• Sign-in (source SignIn, or Offline to any other state): the agent's worker is clocked in with source ContactCenter, at the time of the change, unless they are already clocked in another way.
• Sign-out (source SignOut, or any state to Offline): the worker is clocked out, but only when the clock-in that opened their stretch came from the contact center.

The ContactCenter punch source (WorkforceContactCenterConstants.PunchSource) belongs to this module, not to Workforce: punch sources are open strings, and the feature describes its source through an ITimePunchSourceProvider, so a time clock policy offers The contact center under Workers can punch from only while this feature is enabled, and timesheets name it. Punches and policies saved while sources were numbers are still read.

• Each punch carries contact-center:<event id> as its idempotency key, so an event delivered twice punches once. A punch the time clock refuses (no policy, the contact center not allowed by the policy) is logged and skipped.

Agent states in Time Tracker

The Contact Center Time Tracker feature keeps every agent's states in Time Tracker, for any agent with a user, worker or not.

• Stages. ContactCenterTimeStages (a site setting, exported with the Contact Center time stages deployment step) holds the stage of each AgentPresenceStatus by name, and of each reason by name, which comes first. A state with no stage isn't tracked. When the feature is turned on, ContactCenterTimeStageSeeder fills in the usual states, using a stage with the same name or making it: Available (also offered work and asking for a break), On a call, Wrap-up, Meeting and Training count toward Paid and Worked; Break and Away toward nothing until the site says. Do not disturb, after hours and offline have no stage. The stages are set on Time Tracker > Contact Center Stages.
• Sync. AgentStateTimeTrackerHandler (an IContactCenterEventHandler) runs on every AgentStateChanged event. ContactCenterTimeTrackerSync reads the agent's state log (IAgentStateHistory) from ten minutes before the change to now and calls ITimeTrackerService.SyncAsync with ReplacesRangeOnly, so only those minutes are rebuilt. The entry running into them ends at their start, or goes on in the same stage. Back-to-back states in one stage make one entry, the reason is the entry's note, and the state the agent is in now stays open. It rebuilds from the log, so an event delivered twice changes nothing.
• Over the time clock. The entries are kept under Workforce.ContactCenter with Overrides set to the time clock, so a worker's clocked work is cut around their states while they are signed in, and the time clock's next sync goes around them too. Time Tracker shows them as kept by the Contact Center's agent states, read-only.

Adherence

AdherenceCalculator is pure. It builds the schedule from published shifts (the time around a shift's segments is work) and compares it with the agent's states:

• A moment of scheduled time is in adherence when the agent's state is one the scheduled activity's rule allows, with its reasons when the rule names some.
• Grace: between two activities of the same shift, the agent may still be in the previous activity for the new one's start grace, and already in the next for the old one's end grace. The start and end of a shift have no grace.
• A slip shorter than the rule's shortest slip is forgiven.
• Exceptions leave scheduled time out of the share.
• Adherence is the time in adherence over the scheduled time less exceptions. Conformance is the time in a working state (available, offered work, busy, wrap-up), scheduled or not, over the scheduled work.

AdherenceRuleSet holds one rule per kind of activity (or per activity code) for a set of teams. A team uses its own set or its nearest parent's; otherwise the defaults (AdherenceCalculator.DefaultRules): work is available, offered work, busy or wrap-up; breaks and meals are a break; meetings, training and coaching are their own states (or away, do not disturb); time off is signed out; travel and on call are anything. Grace is two minutes, the shortest slip one minute, and alerts come after five minutes.

AdherenceService:

• CurrentAsync and BoardAsync give each agent's state now against what is scheduled now, from the agent profile's presence and one calendar query for every shift in the 14 hours around now.
• RaiseAlertsAsync raises the Agent Out Of Adherence workflow event (WorkforceEvents.OutOfAdherence) for an agent out longer than the rule's alert time, once per episode (the worker, the scheduled activity's start and when they went out), recorded in AdherenceAlert. The Workforce Adherence Alerts background task runs it every minute.
• ComputeDayAsync and SaveDayAsync work out a worker's day in their time zone (IWorkerTimeZoneService: theirs, else their team's, else the site's) from the schedule, the agent's state spans (IAgentStateHistory, the same timeline the Contact Center workforce reports build) and the exceptions, and save it as an AdherenceDay with its segments. The Workforce Adherence History background task saves every agent's previous day each hour once it is over.
• Exceptions are AdherenceException documents by worker, team and time.

The workflow event's input has WorkerId, WorkerName, TeamId, Status, Reason, ScheduledActivity, OutSinceUtc and Minutes.

My Work

With the Workforce My Work Portal feature on, MyAdherenceController serves Admin/my-work/adherence: the signed-in worker's latest 14 saved AdherenceDays with time scheduled, newest first, with adherence, conformance and the minutes out of adherence. MyAdherenceLinkProvider (an IMyWorkLinkProvider) adds Adherence to the My Work menu once the worker has a saved day.

Reports

The Workforce report data source gains two data sets, limited to the reader's teams and to readers with View adherence:

• Adherence days (WorkforceAdherenceDays): one row per agent and day with adherence and conformance percentages and the hours they come from.
• Adherence segments (WorkforceAdherenceSegments): one row per stretch of a scheduled day, with the scheduled activity, the agent's state and reason, and whether it was in adherence or covered by an exception.

Their Day is a date-only field, so it reads the same in every time zone.

Forecasting

A PlanningGroup is a set of queues (optionally one channel) forecast and staffed together, with its service goal (a service level such as 80% within 20 seconds, an average speed of answer, or both), the highest occupancy, the contacts an agent handles at once, the customers' patience, the shrinkage, the weeks of history and the team that staffs it. A ForecastEvent scales the volume of its days (a closure multiplies by zero), for some groups or all, once or every year.

ForecastService.CreateAsync reads the group's queue intervals in the team's time zone and builds a draft Forecast:

• Daily volume from the weighted history (the same weekday of the last weeks, the latest weighing most) or Holt-Winters (additive triple exponential smoothing with a weekly season, from two weeks of history). Auto back-tests both on the last two weeks and keeps the lower weighted error; each forecast records both errors (MAPE and WAPE).
• Events scale their days.
• Intervals: each day is split into 15-minute intervals by its weekday's share of volume over the history, so closed hours stay empty. The handle time of an interval is the trimmed mean of the same weekday and time, or the overall average.
• Staffing (ErlangCalculator, pure): Erlang C from the stable Erlang B recursion, solving for the fewest agents that meet the service level, the average speed of answer and the occupancy cap; chats and messages divide the handle time by the contacts at once; with a patience, Erlang A from the birth-death chain with abandonment, its answer times approximated by Erlang C on the answered load. The agents to schedule are the agents needed over one minus the shrinkage.

AdjustAsync changes the volume of some days by a percentage and staffs them again. ActivateAsync makes a forecast its group's active one (the one before is superseded) and writes the staffing as the team's coverage requirement named Forecast: group name (CoverageSource.Forecast), one row per run of intervals that need the same people on each date: the minimum is the agents needed and the target the agents to schedule. The planner board and the auto-scheduler use it unchanged. ActiveIntervalsAsync gives the active forecast's intervals of a stretch of time.

Capacity plans

A CapacityPlan looks up to 78 weeks ahead for a planning group: the handle hours of a week of work at the start (or, left empty, the average week of the group's last four weeks of history, CapacityPlanService.HistoryWorkloadAsync), the growth a year, a full-time agent's paid hours, the agents at the start (in the editor, left empty, the team's headcount today), the attrition a month, and its HiringClasses (first day, size, training weeks and ramp-up weeks).

CapacityPlanner.Project (pure) works each week out:

• Work: the starting hours, grown evenly over the year.
• Agents needed: the hours over the group's highest occupancy, over a full-time agent's hours less the group's shrinkage.
• Agents expected: the agents at the start, losing the month's attrition spread over its weeks, plus each hiring class: it answers nothing while it trains, then reaches full productivity evenly over its ramp-up, and loses attrition from its first week.

The plan's page shows the first and worst short weeks and the class that would cover the worst one, starting early enough to finish training and ramp-up.

Forecast report data set

The Workforce report data source gains Forecast intervals (WorkforceForecastIntervals) for readers with Manage forecasts: one row per forecast and 15-minute interval, with the planning group, the forecast's status and model, the day, the contacts, the handle time, the agents needed and to schedule, and the service level, average speed of answer and occupancy expected. Filter on Status to read only active forecasts.

Intraday

IntradayService.DayAsync gives a planning group's day, every 15 minutes, in the team's time zone: the active forecast's volume, handle time and agents needed; the actual volume, handle time and service level from the interval statistics (today's are computed every 15 minutes); the agents on published shifts working then (ICoverageService); and the agents available or working, from the agent intervals of the team's workers.

• Reforecast: IntradayCalculator.ReforecastFactor compares the work so far with its forecast and follows half the difference (between 0.25 and 4); ReforecastAsync scales the rest of the day's active forecast by it (ForecastService.ScaleAsync), staffs it again and updates the team's coverage.
• Quietest times: IntradayCalculator.FindWindows finds where taking some people off the phones for a while (a meeting, training, coaching) adds the least shortfall, among the times with that many people scheduled.
• Offers: an IntradayOffer gives the staffing team voluntary overtime or time off over a stretch of the day, for a number of places, first come, first served. TakeAsync lengthens the worker's shift that ends as the overtime starts (or starts as it ends), or cuts time off from the start or end of a shift, through IShiftService.ChangeTimesAsync with the worker as the initiator, so the change is logged and checked against their rules and earns no predictability pay. Workers take offers on the Offers page of My Work, which the feature adds through the new IMyWorkLinkProvider seam of the portal's menu.

IShiftService.ChangeTimesAsync (in Workforce) moves the start or end of a published shift: it checks the worker's rules with the new times, updates the calendar event and the schedule's draft, drops segments outside the new times, and records a Moved schedule change with who asked for it.

AI tools

When the AI feature is on, two tools join the Workforce tools:

• workforceForecastSummary (Workforce Forecasting, needs Manage forecasts): the active forecast of each planning group, or a named one, for a day in its team's time zone: the contacts, the average handle time, when the work starts and ends, the agent hours, and the most agents to schedule and when.
• workforceOutOfAdherence (Workforce Adherence, needs View adherence): the agents scheduled now in the teams the user manages, or a named team, and those out of adherence, with the scheduled activity, their state and reason, the minutes out and whether an alert was raised.

Recipes

The Adherence rule sets and Forecasting setup deployment steps export what the WorkforceAdherence and WorkforceForecasting steps import, with the records' ids; the stages of agent states go with the Contact Center time stages settings step.

Each feature has a recipe step that matches records by id or name, so a second run updates them, and names the records it refers to. A name that doesn't exist is reported and its record skipped.

• WorkforceForecasting (Workforce Forecasting): PlanningGroups with queueNames and teamName, ForecastEvents with planningGroupNames (none for every planning group), and CapacityPlans with planningGroupName. A plan's startDate moves to its Monday.
• WorkforceAdherence (Workforce Adherence): RuleSets with teamNames, and a rule's activity code by activityName.

{
  "name": "WorkforceForecasting",
  "PlanningGroups": [
    { "name": "Support voice", "queueNames": [ "Support" ], "teamName": "Customer Care", "serviceLevelPercent": 80, "serviceLevelSeconds": 20, "shrinkagePercent": 32 }
  ],
  "CapacityPlans": [
    { "name": "Support voice 2027", "planningGroupName": "Support voice", "startDate": "2027-01-04", "weeks": 52, "weeklyWorkloadHours": 600, "currentFte": 30,
      "hiringClasses": [ { "startDate": "2027-02-01", "size": 4, "trainingWeeks": 4, "rampWeeks": 4 } ] }
  ]
}

The Workforce for Contact Center sample recipe sets up a Customer Care team, a Support queue, a planning group, a holiday and a promotion, a capacity plan with two hiring classes and adherence rules.

Permissions

Permission	Allows
ManageWorkforceAdherence (Manage adherence rules and exceptions)	Adherence rule sets, recording and removing exceptions, and saving a worker's day again. Implied by Manage the whole workforce.
ManageWorkforceForecasts (Manage forecasts)	Planning groups, forecast events, forecasts and capacity plans, making a forecast the team's coverage, the intraday page and its offers, and the forecast intervals data set. Implied by Manage the whole workforce.
ViewWorkforceAdherence (View adherence)	The real-time board, workers' days and the exception list, for the teams one manages, and the adherence data sets.

The Contact Center Agents page needs Manage workers.