Managing time off requests quickly and fairly can be a huge administrative task for contact centres. The optional IEX TotalView Vacation and Holiday Planner feature streamlines the entire time off management assignment process, from selection to approval. This saves management time, ensures objective and rules-based approvals and improves agent morale through increased control of their scheduled time off.

The Vacation & Holiday Planner reduces the amount of time spent administrating schedules, verifying the agent's available time off and ensures that the contact centre will be adequately staffed if the time off is approved. The feature also enables management to offer agents the ability to request time off through an online system and enables automated approval of agent requests.

IEX TotalView Vacation and Holiday Planner manages multiple types of time off - vacations or holidays, sick time, personal time or others - each with unique accrual rates and limits. Time off rules determine how many agents can take time off on a given day, whether partial-day time off is allowed and date ranges for which time off can be requested. Time off rules can be unique for different areas of the contact centre, so that certain skills, shifts or sites can manage the availability of time off independently.

Agents or supervisors can access the Vacation Bidding screen on designated workstations using the intuitive, colour coded, calendar and easy-to-use screens to assist them in making or modifying selections. The screen displays an up-to-date summary of their earned, taken, selected and remaining time off. The colour coded calendar clearly shows which days can be selected and how much time off is available to the agent.

In addition to managing ongoing time off requests, the IEX TotalView Vacation & Holiday Planner supports a bidding process that allows agents to periodically bid for time off based on a seniority, rank, or first-come first-served basis. The system can be configured to use a series of bidding rounds, permitting agents to bid for a specified maximum amount of time off in each round. If the requested time is not available, agents can place themselves on a waiting list for that specific time slot. The bidding and wait list screens can also be accessed directly by agents or managed by a supervisor.

The IEX TotalView system provides customised options for handling changes to selected time off such as a cancellation. A cancelled time slot may automatically become available to agents or it may be reserved until management releases it or grants it to an agent on a wait list for that time.

The IEX TotalView system automatically applies granted vacation time when creating schedules. By integrating vacation data into the schedule the contact centre does not compromise service levels or risk being understaffed. The same type of automatic update applies to the Vacation & Holiday Planner when changes are made to the schedule.

The IEX TotalView Vacation & Holiday Planner offers these additional capabilities:

• Supports partial-day, full day and week vacations. Weekends prior to and following the selected vacation week can be forced off.
• Vacation data can be viewed in hours or FTE days.
• Supports vacation time carry over.
• Supervisors can override the amount of time off earned by an agent to "loan" vacation time.
• Supervisors can enter comments for approved, rejected, or cancelled time off and generate reports on active and inactive time off entries.