What is an Activity Plan?
An Activity Plan is a group of rules that tell Surfboard how you want your team to be scheduled. Once applied to the schedule, Surfboard will then use these rules to dynamically generate schedules working with the surfers who are available, and adapting to time off and calendar events.
Activity Plans are based on the simple rule of 'Plan once and schedule automatically'.
Just like shift plans, you can create multiple Activity Plans to schedule your team in different ways at different times of the week, month or year. They're also perfect for preparing for peak events (e.g. Black Friday) and public holidays where your priorities and staffing may vary.
1. Create a new Activity Plan ✨
Creating a plan
To create a new Activity Plan, first navigate to your schedule and then either select 'day' from the dropdown or tap on the date on any day of the week to jump to your daily schedule.
Next, tap the 'add activities' button in the top left of your schedule to open the toolbar and click 'create a plan'.
Entering preview mode
When you are creating or editing an Activity Plan, your Surfboard schedule will enter preview mode.
Preview mode lets you preview how your activity plan may look once it’s applied to your schedule. Activity Plans are dynamic and adapt to the surfers and hours available on each day. So if anyone changes shifts, books time off or syncs calendar events, the final result will look a little different.
The schedule preview will update whenever you add or change a rule. You cannot manually edit anything in the schedule while in preview mode.
2. Customise your plan 🎨
Style your plan
Tap on the plan name (defaults to 'new plan') to give your plan a name and choose a colour. This is how your plan will look in the coverage bar once it's applied to the schedule.
Choose who the plan is for
Next, you need to choose who the plan is for. You can create Activity Plans for your whole team, or choose specific surfers or teams.
Select who the plan is for from the surfers dropdown in the form.
The surfers who you see listed in the schedule preview will then be filtered.
All the rules that you create in this Activity Plan will only apply to the selected surfers.
💡 Tip: Companies with multiple team leads usually find it easier to create one Activity Plan per team, so they can tailor it based on what they work on and how they like to work.
3. Planning breaks ☕️
Many teams choose to schedule their team's breaks to ensure they have enough coverage throughout the day.
You can schedule and stagger breaks for different surfers and shifts by creating rules. You can create as many rules as your team need. Surfboard will then automatically schedule these breaks for you once the Activity Plan is applied to the schedule.
⏩ If your team don't choose to schedule breaks you can skip this step!
Add a break rule
Click 'add break rule' from the toolbar on the left of your screen.
You'll now be taken to the break rule form.
Choose or create a break
Select the break that you want to schedule.
If you have already made some breaks you can select one of those.
If you haven't created any breaks yet, create a new one. When you create a break you can give it a name, emoji and a colour (this is how the break will appear in the schedule).
If you need to reuse the same break for multiple rules, you can enter a custom name to identify it within your Activity Plan, e.g. UK team's lunch, German team's lunch. (this won't affect how the break shows in your schedule).
Define how the break should be scheduled
Set how long the break is: You can create a break as short as 15mins
Choose when this break should be scheduled: Select the days, time window and timezone to schedule the break. You can add extra windows if breaks happen at different times on different days
Choose how much you want to stagger breaks: Breaks will stagger within the window you set in the previous step.
Filter surfers: By default, every surfer in the plan will be included in the break rule. You can use filters to choose which surfers should be included in each rule. This allows you to create rules for different groups of surfers for different situations. Read more about how to use filters here.
Review your break
Take a look at your schedule preview to see how this break is scheduled across different days.
If it doesn’t look right, you can adjust your settings.
When you’re happy, hit save!
4. Planning for coverage 💬
When scheduling live channels you need to make sure you have the right number of surfers available to serve your customers. This is referred to as 'coverage'. Next, we’ll walk you through how to create an activity rule to maintain coverage.
Add an activity rule
Click 'add activity rule' from the toolbar on the left of your screen.
You'll now be taken to the activity rule form.
Choose or create an activity
Select the activity that you want to schedule. You can select an existing activity or create a new one.
🚀 When scheduling activities for coverage, there are 2 things that can make your scheduling more effective:
Link the activity to a ticket group: This means that the staffing for this activity can be tracked against your forecast. You can link a ticket group to a forecast when creating or editing an activity in the schedule toolbar.
Assign activities to surfers as skills: When surfers are assigned activities as skills, you can better staff activities as you know you'll always have the right surfers on the right tasks. You can assign activities to surfers when creating or editing an activity in the schedule toolbar, or by visiting the surfers page.
Define how this activity should be scheduled
Select the ‘set number of surfers’ option to plan for coverage.
Choose when you need coverage on this activity: Select the days, time window and timezone that match the operating hours of this channel.
Specify your coverage: You can set coverage as granular or as broad as you need to, from every hour to all day long. You can add additional windows if your need different coverage on different days.
🚀 If you've linked your activity to a ticket group, you can flip the toggle on the coverage bar to easily compare how many surfers you’re forecasted to need compared to the settings in your plan.
Choose how long surfers need on this activity: Adjust this based on how your team work best. We recommend using ‘shrink to cover’ to fill awkward gaps in the schedule, especially over lunches.
Filter surfers: By default, every surfer in the plan will be included in the rule. You can use filters to choose which surfers should be included in each rule. This allows you to create rules for different groups of surfers for different situations. Read more about how to use filters here.
Review your coverage
Take a look at your schedule preview to see how this activity is scheduled across different days.
If you notice you have patches of low coverage, we recommend playing with the session length.
When you’re happy, hit save!
Not sure what scheduling method is best for you? 🤔
Read our guide on common scheduling use cases
Click here to find a list of common activity scheduling use cases, as well as tips on how to best configure them within Surfboard.
4. Planning to meet a target time ⏱
Some activities need to be scheduled to achieve a target amount of time, for example if your team need to do 3 hours of admin a day or if your surfers all need 1 hour of development time a week. Next, we’ll walk you through how to create an activity rule to achieve a total time goal.
Add an activity rule
Click 'add activity rule' from the toolbar on the left of your screen.
You'll now be taken to the activity rule form.
Choose or create an activity
Select the activity that you want to schedule. You can select an existing activity or create a new one.
🚀 'Set amount of time' activities can also be linked to ticket groups to track staffing using the coverage bar.
Define how this activity should be scheduled
Select ‘set the amount of time’ option: This type of scheduling lets us set a goal for individual or shared time spent on an activity
Enter the time target you have for this activity: You can set a target per day or per week.
Now, decide if you want this target to be set for each individual surfer or shared between surfers.
Choose how much time surfers need on this activity at a time: You can split the total time into smaller chunks, or schedule it all in one go. 'Shrink to fill' lets Surfboard fill awkward gaps in the schedule.
Choose how flexible or specific you need to be: If you’re flexible, Surfboard will try to fit slots of time in on this activity around everything else. If you need to be more specific, click 'add time'. You can then choose from the following options:
Between: select a window of time that this activity can happen within.
At: enter a specific start time for this activity, it will then be scheduled for the length of time you entered previously.
At start of a shift: the activity will be scheduled at the start of each selected surfer's shift, regardless of the start time.
The end of a shift: the activity will be scheduled at the end of each selected surfer's shift, regardless of the end time.
Filter surfers: By default, every surfer in the plan will be included in the break rule. You can use filters to choose which surfers should be included in each rule. This allows you to create rules for different groups of surfers for different situations. Read more about how to use filters here.
💡 Tip: Many teams use 'at start of shift' to give their surfer's time to go through their replies and personal inboxes when they begin work.
Review your activity
Take a look at your schedule preview to see how this activity is scheduled across different days.
When you’re happy, hit save!
4. Planning to fill shifts 👀
Often teams will have activities that surfers need to do all day; such as on-call, monitoring specialist inboxes or supporting junior surfers. Other teams may also have a 'fallback' or 'default' activity that surfers should spend any additional free time on, such as live chat.
The 'fill shifts' scheduling method allows you to easily fill time in surfer's shifts on a specific activity. You can also choose how many surfers you need on task, to further control how your team are scheduled.
Add an activity rule
Click 'add activity rule' from the toolbar on the left of your screen.
You'll now be taken to the activity rule form.
Choose or create an activity
Select the activity that you want to schedule. You can select an existing activity or create a new one.
🚀 'Fill shift' activities can also be linked to ticket groups to track staffing using the coverage bar.
Define how this activity should be scheduled
Select the ‘fill shifts’ option: This type of scheduling lets fill all available time in surfers' shifts.
Enter the number of surfers needed: You can choose to assign this task to everyone or enter a custom number of surfers.
Filter surfers: By default, every surfer in the plan will be included in the break rule. You can use filters to choose which surfers should be included in each rule. This allows you to create rules for different groups of surfers for different situations. Read more about how to use filters here.
💡 Tip: You can use this rule as a fallback or filler activity by setting the priority to be lower than your other tasks. This will make sure that it's only real 'free time' that's being filled.
Review your activity
Take a look at your schedule preview to see how this activity is scheduled across different days.
When you’re happy, hit save!
5. Filtering surfers
By default, every surfer in the plan will be included in the rule. You can use filters to choose which surfers should be included in each rule. This allows you to create rules for different groups of surfers for different situations.
The filters you have available are:
Surfer - Include or exclude specific surfers
Surfer skill - Include or exclude surfers based on the skills they have
Shift - Include or exclude surfers based on the shift they have that day
Scheduled activities - Include or exclude surfers based on if they are scheduled or not scheduled on another activity.
e.g Include surfers who have not worked on the Priority calls activity
Shift length - Include or exclude surfers based on the length of their shift.
You also have the ability to use multiple filters within the same rule. This gives you a lot of flexibility over how activities are scheduled. For example you could say:
"include surfers who are skilled on Phones, not on the Evening shift and have not been scheduled on Chat."
6. Finalising the plan 🎉
You’ve made your activities so now it’s time to add the finishing touches ✨
Changing the priority of activities
You can use the priority order of activities to control which activities you need to be scheduled and which ones can be sacrificed if time is tight.
To change the priority of an activity, select one from the list in your plan. Then, click on the three-dot button (...) and open the menu to the right of the activity and change the priority up or down.
Notice how the schedule preview changes?
Order your activities in priority order to make sure your most important tasks always get done.
We recommend putting live channels and time-sensitive activities at the top. If you want a fallback or ‘filler’ activity, you can put that at the bottom of the list to fill any free time.
Applying your plan to the schedule
You’ve made your plan, now it’s time to schedule automatically. When you apply your plan, your rules will be used to generate schedules across the period of your choosing.
When you’re happy with your activity plan you can add it to the schedule by clicking the 'apply plan' button in the top right of your screen.
Any previous activities for surfers in this plan will be removed (this includes manual edits).
Activities will be added to the schedule in draft.
Activities will be fairly distributed across all your surfers according to your rules.
Surfboard will schedule around any synced calendar events. (read more about synced events here)
The coverage bar for this activity plan will show at the top of the schedule. (read more about the coverage bar here).
💡 You need to publish the schedule to share your scheduled activities with your team. Even if you already published the shifts.