Schedule Adherence in Workforce Optimization for ITSM

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Schedule Adherence in Workforce Optimization for ITSM

    Schedule Adherence in Workforce Optimization for ITSM enables ServiceNow customers to analyze how closely agents follow their scheduled activities and complete their assigned work time. This capability helps managers and administrators better align staffing needs, forecast agent demand, and enhance operational efficiency by measuring both adherence (following the schedule) and conformance (work completed regardless of timing).

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    Key Features

    • Adherence and Conformance Metrics: Track how well agents stick to their schedules and complete planned work, using key performance indicators like Start Time, End Time, Time Worked, Adherence%, and Conformance%.
    • Role-Based Actions:
      • Managers: View agent time attendance, compare planned versus actual schedules, set adherence targets, analyze historical data, modify clock-in/out times, and identify coaching opportunities.
      • Administrators: Configure threshold percentages and formulas for adherence and conformance calculations, and activate business rules to record agent clock-in/out events.
      • Agents: Clock in and out of work shifts and update presence status to reflect work activities.
    • Time-Worked Summary: Provides detailed daily summaries of agent activities to monitor productivity and identify improvement areas.
    • Schedule Adherence Extension Points: Support for custom scripts to tailor adherence and conformance calculations to specific organizational needs.
    • Configuration Properties: Ability to adjust settings that govern adherence and conformance calculations to optimize workforce management.

    Key Outcomes

    • Gain actionable insights into historical and real-time agent schedule compliance to enhance workforce planning.
    • Improve resource utilization by identifying inefficiencies and non-value-adding activities.
    • Enable targeted coaching to improve agent performance aligned with team goals.
    • Facilitate accurate forecasting of staffing requirements based on adherence trends.
    • Enhance operational efficiency through configurable metrics and extension points tailored to organizational workflows.

    Analyze how closely your agents adhere to their scheduled activities. You can also analyze whether they complete the total time they were scheduled to work. Use these metrics to align your staffing needs better and forecast the demand for agents more effectively.

    Adherence measures how closely agents follow their schedule to complete their assigned work. Conformance measures the work completed regardless of when it was completed.

    Use Schedule Adherence to:
    • Gain insights into how agent resources were historically used and plan your staffing needs based on that data.
    • Measure whether the effort spent on forecasting agent demand and scheduling team members is used in an optimal manner.
    • Discover coaching opportunities for your agents when you find gaps in their adherence. For more information, see Coaching.
    As a manager, you can do the following actions:
    • Gain insights into whether your team is complying with published schedules.
    • Increase your team's performance by setting expected adherence targets.
    • View the time attendance of your agents by looking at such details as clock-in and clock-out times.
    • Analyze the historical time attendance of your team members.
    • View planned versus actual historical data for your team and individual agents.
    • Modify the clock-in and clock-out times of your agents.

    As an administrator, you can set the threshold percentages and change the formulas for calculating schedule adherence and conformance.

    As an agent, you can clock-in to and clock-out of your work shift. For more information, see Service Operations Workspace - Scheduling.

    Here's a typical schedule adherence and conformance workflow:
    1. The administrator sets the Agent Time Work Event Trigger business rule as active to record the clock-in and clock-out times of Workforce Optimization for ITSM agents.
    2. An agent works for the ITSM team and reports to a manager. Let's assume this scenario is a typical work day​:
      1. The agent logs in to ITSM Agent Workspace ​.
      2. The agent changes the presence status to Available and starts work. The clock-in event gets generated.
      3. The agent changes the presence status to Break and goes for lunch. The clock-out event gets generated.
      4. When the agent comes back from lunch and answers ​a phone call, the presence state becomes Busy and the clock-in event gets generated.
      5. The agent then logs out from CSM ​Agent Workspace or changes the presence status to Offline​. The clock-out event gets generated.
      6. At the end-of-the-day, the agent's time worked summary is generated with key performance indicators (KPIs), such as Start Time, End Time, Planned Work, Time Not Worked, Available Non Planned Time, Time Worked, and Adherence%, Conformance %​.
    3. The agent's manager logs in to Manager Workspace to view the agent's time worked in the Team Calendar. The manager can also view the agent's actual time worked and working pattern for all historical days. If required, the manager can coach the agent to a desired performance that fits in with the team culture.