Building a Schedule

The Schedule tab turns your staffing requirements into a practical shift plan. You define reusable shift templates, assign headcount to each day, and instantly see whether your plan covers the requirements — interval by interval.

Shift Templates

A shift template defines a reusable shift pattern: a name, start time, end time, break duration, and which days it runs. You can have as many templates as your operation needs.

Creating a shift

1. Click Add shift on the Schedule tab.
2. Enter the shift name (e.g., "Early — 07:00–15:00").
3. Set start time, end time, and break minutes (e.g., 45 minutes for a standard lunch break).
4. Choose which days of the week this shift runs (checkboxes for Mon–Sun).
5. Set the headcount: how many agents are on this shift each day it runs.
6. Optionally, assign a role (e.g., "Team Lead", "Agent") or a custom hourly rate if this shift is paid differently.
7. Click Save.

Headcount suggestion

When you click into the headcount field, Turnella shows a suggested headcount — the number of agents that would best cover the unstaffed gap during this shift's hours. This is a starting point; adjust it to match your actual roster availability.

Break deduction

The model deducts break time from coverage. A 08:00–16:00 shift with a 45-minute break does not provide 8 hours of coverage — each agent is only available for 7 hours 15 minutes. The coverage chart reflects this automatically. Do not forget to account for breaks when comparing scheduled FTE to your requirement.

Reading the Coverage Chart

The coverage chart is the central view of the Schedule tab. It shows:

• Blue line — scheduled agents at each interval (sum of all shift headcounts)
• Grey line — required agents at each interval (from the Requirements tab)
• Green shading — intervals where scheduled ≥ required (properly staffed)
• Red shading — intervals where scheduled < required (gap)

The coverage percentage in the summary card tells you the share of intervals that are green. Aim for 95%+ for critical queues.

Closing Coverage Gaps

Below the coverage chart, the gap recommendations panel lists the largest understaffed periods with suggested fixes:

• Which shift to extend or add headcount to
• How many extra agents would close the gap
• The cost impact of adding those agents
• Whether the same gap recurs at the same time each week

Common gap-closing strategies

Named Schedule Plans

A schedule plan is a named snapshot of your shift headcounts for a specific week or date range. This lets you maintain separate plans for different periods — normal weeks, peak trading periods, holiday cover — and switch between them as needed.

1. Click New plan on the Schedule tab.
2. Give it a name (e.g., "Summer plan — reduced volume", "Q4 peak — full complement").
3. Set the week start date and adjust headcounts per shift per day.
4. Save the plan.

Plans can be duplicated, archived, and compared side by side. This is useful for presenting options to stakeholders: "Plan A costs £42,000/week and achieves 97% coverage; Plan B costs £38,000/week and achieves 91% coverage — which do you want to approve?"

Exporting the Schedule

From the Schedule tab, you can export in three formats: