What is a skill?
In Surfboard, activities are assigned to an agent as a skill to signify that they are trained and able to work on these tasks.
Agents can be trained in any number of activities. Some work as generalists, where they can do anything, whereas others are specialists, working only on select activities.
Add on new joiners and senior staff and knowing who can do what can get messy - fast!
Skills allow you to keep track of which agents have which skills, and to automate your scheduling.
How to assign skills to surfers
There are two ways to assign skills to surfers:
Assign skills from the surfer page:
Navigate to the Surfer tab
Select the checkbox next to the agent you want to assign skills to
Select the Skills dropdown and select all of the activities this agent is trained to do.
Hit save
Assign skills when editing an activity
Navigate to Schedule > Day
Open the toolbar by clicking Add activities
Click the ✏️ pen icon next to an activity to edit it.
Select the Surfers skilled in this activity dropdown and select all of the agents who are trained to do this activity.
Hit save
How to schedule using skills
Skills are primarily used when scheduling activities using Activity plans.
By using skill filters, you can ensure that only skilled agents are scheduled time on certain activities, reducing scheduling errors or the need to keep track of their skills.
Create or edit an existing Activity plan
Create or edit a break or activity rule
Scroll down to Filter surfers and click Add condition
Select Surfer skill as the controller
Select the applicable operator, e.g.
Choose is any of to apply this rule to agents who have this skill(s)
Choose is none of to exclude this rule from agents who have this skill(s)
Finally, select the relevant activity or activities from the dropdown
💡 If you have updated the skills of agents, you will need to reapply any activities using this skill as a filter to update the schedule.
How to filter the schedule by skill
You can also filter the schedule to only view agents with particular skills.
This is useful when tracking coverage or tweaking schedules.
Go to the Schedule (day or week view)
Select the Filter by skill dropdown and select the skills you want to filter the schedule by
The schedule will then be filtered to only show agents which have the selected skills.