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'.
The 'coverage' scheduling method allows you to set the coverage you need on an activity. Surfboard will then fairly rotate scheduled time on this task to assigned surfers to maintain coverage.
💡 Best for live channels or activities where you always need surfers to be available e.g. phones, live chat, or tickets with short SLAs.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Define how this activity should be scheduled
Select the ‘coverage’ 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.
Choose how long surfers need on this activity: Adjust this based on how your team work best.
Unlimited: Surfboard can fill any and all available time in a surfer's shift with this activity.
Custom duration: Surfboard will only schedule this activity for a set duration of time 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.
🚀 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.
4. 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."
5. 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!