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Workforce Scheduling Service Objective: Minimize Overtime

Use the Workforce Scheduling Minimize Overtime objective to reduce the duration of time that appointments are scheduled into extended hours. Scheduling during overtime hours is generally less desirable than during standard working hours because overtime usually comes at a higher cost and causes strain on service resources. This objective is relevant for field scheduling only.

Required Editions

Available in: Lightning Experience
Available in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions

Include this objective in a scheduling policy to control how much you trade off other scheduling preferences to reduce overtime used for scheduling. Overtime hours are represented by Extended time slots in operating hours or Extended shifts.

Note
Note An Extended time slot or shift is considered as overtime only if it’s created immediately after a normal time slot or shift. For example, an 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM normal time slot and 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM extended time slot. If an extended time slot or shift is created before normal working hours, between two normal working hours, or not immediately following normal working hours, it isn’t considered as overtime by this objective.

During schedule creation, the objective calculates the amount of overtime added to the schedule. Added overtime means the objective considers only the difference in total overtime between the old schedule and the new schedule. For example, a new appointment needs to be scheduled, and three options for the appointment exist.

  • Option 1: Overall overtime added to the schedule is 65 minutes.
  • Option 2: Overall overtime added to the schedule is 38 minutes.
  • Option 3: Overall overtime added to the schedule is 0 minutes (no overtime).

Of the three options, option 3 is preferred, because the difference in overtime is the lowest out of all available options (0 minutes).

Every minute of an appointment scheduled in Extended time is considered as overtime. This time also includes any:

  • Travel time during Extended time, unless it’s within the parameters configured in the Resource Availability rule to allow for travel to home at the resource’s expense.
  • Break time that takes place during Extended time.

Each minute of Extended time that’s used is penalized. The penalty can be calculated as x minutes in Extended time divided by a 2-hour scale (2 hours × 60 minutes per hour). The total penalty points are multiplied by the weight of the Minimize Overtime objective in the scheduling policy to determine the resulting score of the schedule for that appointment.

See Also