How is workload calculated?

'Workload' is a measure of how occupied an agent is with work. It can be viewed in terms of workload count, workload hours, or workload hours as %. To calculate it, we use the planned dates of the work and the user's working hours. Let's understand them in detail.

User working hours

When the workload module is enabled, it introduces the capability of assigning working hours to agents and project-only members along with the capability to plan each piece of work in the service desk. Both of them are then used to display a user’s workload. 

The business hours module lets you define your service desk's working days, hours, and holidays today. This information is then used in SLA calculation for the tickets to which these hours get applied. When workload is enabled, a new module called "Work Schedule" is added in the "User Management" section. This module allows admins to use any existing business hours to create a new work schedule and assign it to agents and project-only users. 

To understand how Work Schedules work in detail, please refer to this article.

Note: This information will ONLY be used in the workload module to understand a person’s working days, hours, and official holidays and will NOT impact SLAs. 

Personal leaves/vacations cannot be added to the business hours schedule or incorporated by any other means. 

By default, all the agents and project-only members will be assigned the default work schedule of your service-desk. You can update the work schedule of the agent directly from the work schedule module or from the agent/project-only members' profile page.

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Note: Updating the work schedule via APIs or import/export is not possible.

Workload Metrics

• Workload Count

It is the total number of items the user has planned to work on that day. An item will be counted only when the planned dates are entered. If only one of the planned dates is entered, we will count the item only on that particular day.

Let’s understand this with the help of an example:

Assume ticket A, problem B, and change C are the only items assigned to agent John. John plans them in the following way:

          Result:

          Workload Count for 15th June = 2 (because of A and B)

          Workload Count for 16th June = 1(because of A)

          C doesn’t contribute to workload count because we don’t know the dates it is being planned for.

• Workload Hours

It is the total number of hours that have been planned for the day and is calculated by summing up the planned effort/day of all the items the user will be working on that day.

To calculate planned effort/day:

1. We first calculate the total days required to finish the work as [Planned End Date - Planned Start Date]

2. The planned effort is then divided by the duration calculated above to determine the planned effort/day.

Note: In case there are any holidays/non-working days between the start and end dates, those days are omitted from the calculation.

Let’s assume John plans to start working on problem B on 15th June and end it on 20th June. He has estimated the effort to be 12 hours.

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The effort will be equally split between all the days. But 18th and 19th June are weekends, so effectively he is working for 4 days only. Therefore, the workload hours contributed by this problem will be (12/4) = 3 hours/day.

Note:

• Agent's work timings, defined in business hours, are not taken into account when distributing planned effort. For eg., if the planned start date is 15th July - 10 pm, effort will be attributed to that day even though the agent's working hours (9 am-5 pm) have crossed.
• If a task is assigned midway to another agent, the entire workload gets attributed to the new agent.

• Workload Hours as %

It is the percentage of hours the user has planned for work out of the total working hours for the day.

It is calculated as =  (Workload hours/Total working hours for the day) * 100.

Learn how you can automate the entry of planned values here.

Setting Workload Levels

Admins can define the level at which an agent will be considered to be underloaded and overloaded with work. These levels are then indicated in the workload module by the color of the workload cells.

By default workload levels are defined as:

• Low workload: <=80%

• Optimal workload: >80% and <=100%

• High workload: >100%   

To change the allocation levels, go to Admin > Project and Workload Management > Workload Management > Workload Levels. If your account has more than one workspace, navigate to Admin > Global Settings > Project and Workload Management > Workload Management > Workload Levels.