Getting Started with Turnella
Turnella is a workforce planning and capacity planning tool built for operations teams — contact centres, back-office teams, and any operation that needs to answer three questions every week: How many people do I need? When do I need them? What will it cost?
This guide takes you from creating an account to your first complete staffing plan.
Creating Your Account
Go to turnella.com and click Get started. You need only an email address and a password. There is no trial period and no credit card required — the full tool is free to use.
Once you have created your account and signed in, Turnella saves all your data to the cloud automatically. Your workstreams sync across devices whenever you are signed in.
The Dashboard
After signing in, you land on the Dashboard — your planning home screen. It shows all your active workstreams as cards, with health grades, key metrics, and quick links to the next action needed in each one.
If this is your first time, the dashboard shows an empty state with a prompt to create your first workstream or load a sample data set to explore.
Dashboard summary cards
When you have two or more workstreams with requirements calculated, the dashboard shows portfolio-level summary cards at the top:
- Peak headcount — the highest single-interval staffing need across all workstreams combined
- Workstreams scheduled — how many have a completed shift plan
- Workstreams with warnings — how many have coverage gaps, forecast issues, or budget overruns
- Combined weekly cost — total labour cost across all workstreams (when cost data is entered)
Health grades
Each workstream card shows a health grade from A to D based on coverage:
| Grade | Coverage | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| A | ≥ 95% | Fully staffed. All but a handful of intervals meet the requirement. |
| B | 85–94% | Mostly covered. Some gaps exist, typically in peak intervals. |
| C | 75–84% | Notable gaps. Service level is likely to be impacted in peak periods. |
| D | < 75% | Significant under-coverage. Urgent attention needed. |
Alerts panel
Below the summary cards, the Alerts panel flags specific issues across all workstreams — coverage below 80%, peak deficits, budget variance exceeding 5%, and forecast accuracy degrading.
What Is a Workstream?
A workstream is the core planning unit in Turnella. It represents one team, one channel, or one queue — for example, "Inbound Voice UK", "Live Chat", or "Email Support". Each workstream has its own data, forecast, staffing requirements, schedule, and cost.
You can have as many workstreams as you need. A typical contact centre might have three: one for voice, one for chat, and one for email. The dashboard shows all of them so you can manage the full portfolio.
Do not mix channels in a single workstream. Voice calls, live chat, and email require different staffing formulas. A workstream set to Voice uses Erlang C — applying it to email data will produce incorrect headcount numbers.
Creating Your First Workstream
Click New workstream on the dashboard. The setup wizard takes you through five steps:
Step 1: Choose your industry
Select the type of operation that best describes your team. Options include Contact Centre, Healthcare, Warehouse, Retail, Financial Services, IT Service Desk, and others. Your choice pre-loads sensible default assumptions for that context.
Step 2: Choose your work type
Select the specific type of work within your industry. For a contact centre, the options include Inbound voice, Live chat, Email support, Back-office case work, and others. This step sets defaults for AHT, service level, and shrinkage based on what is typical for that queue type.
Step 3: Name your workstream
Give the workstream a clear, specific name. Good examples: "UK Inbound — Voice", "Live Chat — Tier 1", "Email: Returns & Complaints". Avoid vague names like "Team 1" — you will thank yourself later when you have six workstreams on the dashboard.
Step 4: Set your assumptions
Five sliders let you adjust the core staffing model inputs. These are pre-populated from your work type selection but you can change them now or at any time later in Settings.
For a voice workstream, the five assumptions are:
| Assumption | What it controls | Typical starting value |
|---|---|---|
| AHT (Average Handle Time) | Mean time per call including wrap-up, in seconds | 240 seconds (4 minutes) |
| Service level target | Share of calls answered within the target wait time | 80% |
| Target answer time | The "within X seconds" threshold | 20 seconds |
| Max occupancy | Guardrail cap on agent busyness | 85% |
| Shrinkage | Share of paid hours not available for contacts | 30% |
You can change any of these assumptions at any time from the Requirements tab or Settings. They do not lock in at workstream creation.
Step 5: Set your operating calendar
Tell Turnella which days your team works and what hours they operate. This filters charts to show only operating hours, excludes non-operating intervals from staffing calculations, and flags schedule shifts that fall outside operating hours.
Click Create workstream to finish. You land on the Data tab — the first step in the planning workflow.
The Five-Step Planning Workflow
Every workstream follows the same planning sequence. Each step feeds the next:
| Step | Tab | What it produces |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Data | Historical interval records — the raw evidence of what demand looked like |
| 2 | Forecast | A forward-looking demand prediction per interval |
| 3 | Requirements | Headcount needed per interval to meet your service level target |
| 4 | Schedule | A shift plan that covers the requirements |
| 5 | Cost | The weekly labour cost of your schedule |
You do not need to complete all five steps. The Requirements step alone gives you a headcount number you can act on immediately.
Navigation and Keyboard Shortcuts
The left sidebar lists all your workstreams with stage badges showing their progress. Click any workstream to open it. The tabs across the top switch between planning steps.
Press Ctrl+K (Windows) or Cmd+K (Mac) anywhere in the app to open the command palette — jump to any workstream or tab instantly without using the mouse.
Getting Help
The help chat button (bottom-right on every page) answers questions about how the app works and what the metrics mean. For account issues, data problems, or feature requests, email support@turnella.com.