Importing Your Data

The Data tab is where you bring in historical records of your demand — how many contacts arrived in each time interval, and how long they took. Turnella uses this to build a forecast and to track forecast accuracy over time.

What Data Do You Need?

You need interval-level records: one row per time window, showing when it started and how many contacts arrived. Ideally you also have average handle time (AHT) per interval, though this is optional.

How much history is enough?

Uploading a CSV File

Most phone platforms, ticketing systems, ACD systems, and WFM tools can export interval data as CSV. Turnella accepts any CSV that contains at least a date-time column and a volume column.

Step-by-step upload

1. On the Data tab, click Upload CSV or drag and drop your file into the upload area.
2. Turnella previews the first 10 rows and attempts to auto-detect columns. Names like date, datetime, interval, start_time, timestamp are detected automatically.
3. If auto-detection misses a column, use the dropdown selectors to map it manually.
4. If you have an AHT column, map it here. The column must be in seconds (e.g., 243, not 4:03).
5. Click Import. Turnella ingests all rows, skipping exact timestamp duplicates.

AHT format warning: If your phone system exports AHT in minutes:seconds format (e.g., "4:03"), convert it before uploading. Excel formula: =VALUE(LEFT(A1,FIND(":",A1)-1))*60+VALUE(RIGHT(A1,2))

Uploading multiple files

You can upload as many CSV files as you need. Each import adds new records without overwriting existing ones. Duplicate timestamps are skipped automatically. This is useful for uploading separate monthly exports from your phone system.

Generating Demo Data

If you do not yet have historical data, click Generate demo data on the Data tab. This creates eight weeks of synthetic inbound voice data with realistic patterns:

• Intraday curve: peaks at 10:00–11:00 and 14:00–15:00, quieter early morning and late afternoon
• Day-of-week pattern: Monday is busiest, Friday afternoon is quieter
• Weekly growth trend: approximately +2% per week
• Random variation: ±10% per interval, simulating natural day-to-day fluctuation

Demo data is a good way to understand how the forecast, requirements, and schedule features work before you import real data. You can delete it and start fresh at any time.

Data Quality Checks

After each import, Turnella runs automatic quality checks:

Missing intervals

If there is a gap in the date range — for example, a full day with no records — Turnella flags it. This could be a normal closure (bank holiday, weekend) or a missing export. Check your source data if you see unexpected gaps in an operating period.

Outliers

Intervals with volume more than three standard deviations above the mean are flagged. These might be genuine demand spikes (keep them) or system errors (zero or inflated counts). Investigate before deciding whether to keep or remove them.

Duplicate timestamps

Records with the same interval start as an existing record are skipped on import. Skipped duplicates are listed in the import summary.

Viewing and Exporting Your Data

The Data tab shows a table of all imported observations with date, interval start, volume, and AHT. You can:

• Filter by date range
• Sort by any column
• Download the full dataset as CSV using Export observations

Manual Entry

Click Add observation to enter volume and AHT for individual intervals — useful for quick what-if checks or testing the tool before uploading real data. Manual entry is not a substitute for real history when building a forecast; the model needs at least 4 weeks of consistent records.