The basics
Activities in Planbase are time segments within an employee's schedule, designated for specific tasks or work such as handling calls in the morning and chats in the afternoon. They can also include things like appointments, breaks or meetings.
Common use cases for activities include resource and capacity planning, patient booking, ensuring compliance rules are met and allowing unproductive time to be recorded.
Configuring activities
From the Planbase app, go to the scheduling screen. Click the settings cog on the upper right-hand side and select 'Activities'. This displays a list of all available activity types in your account.
Planbase supports 3 kinds of activity and when configuring a new activity you'll be prompted to select which kind of activity it is:
Appointments — Scheduled time that can be booked by patients or external users through a booking link.
Blocked Time — Scheduled time reserved for a specific purpose, such as breaks, lunch, administrative work, or dedicated call time.
Availability Groups — Scheduled time during which a team member is available to work across a defined group of activities.
Activity Specific Settings
Depending on the kind of activity, you'll then be prompted to configure relevant settings that control who can perform this activity based on their teams, roles, licenses, and skills, as well as operational rules such as licensure, handle times, and routing logic.
Eligibility
Specify who can perform each activity based on roles, skills, licenses, or teams.
Operational rules
Set parameters such as the minimum and maximum duration of activities, frequency requirements (e.g., breaks), and occurrence limits per shift or day.
Activities and forecasts
When configuring a forecast, you can optionally select which activities should count toward that forecast’s staffing requirements. Only scheduled time on those activities will contribute toward meeting the requirements.
Performance metrics used to turn volumes into requirements—such as average handle time, target wait time, SLA%, and shrinkage—are configured on the forecast, not on the activity itself. See Configuring forecasts for details.
💡 You can optionally restrict a forecast so that only work on specific activities counts toward its staffing requirements. This helps you compare scheduled activity time against required coverage.
Scheduling and managing activities
Adding activities to shifts
In the scheduling view, locate the tick and circle icon under a shift to access and add activities. Select activities from a dropdown list that represents all configured tasks.
View all activities
To view of all activities across shifts, click the 'Activities Detail' button.
Impact on staffing requirements
Scheduled activities can contribute toward the staffing requirements defined by your forecasts. For example, time scheduled on a call-handling activity can count toward meeting the requirements for the related forecast.
Metrics and visualization
The metrics chart, enabled from the top right corner, helps visualize how scheduled activities compare to staffing requirements—showing scheduled coverage versus what is required.
Next steps
For an overview of volumes, requirements, predictions, and actuals, see Getting started with forecasting.
To configure forecasts and choose which activities count toward requirements, see Configuring forecasts.