Prescio User guide

Maintain reusable planning rules

Configuration

Understand every Configuration page and the boundary between reusable rules, operational planning and intelligence.

Configuration pages

Configuration principles

Configuration defines reusable rules and current baseline assumptions.

It does not directly maintain:

  • approved forecasts;
  • workforce actions;
  • transformations;
  • Scenarios;
  • operational Intelligence narratives.

Those belong in their respective Workbench, Scenario or Intelligence areas.

Configuration changes can affect future Production and Scenario calculations, so they should be made deliberately.

Configuration Overview

Purpose

Provides a map of the configuration workspace and highlights coverage.

What it shows

Summary cards and links cover:

  • organisation structure;
  • Work Types and requirement methods;
  • Department planning;
  • Queue planning;
  • intraday profiles;
  • shrinkage profiles;
  • ramp profiles;
  • governance and thresholds.

It also explains the boundary between:

  • Configuration;
  • Workbench;
  • Intelligence.

Use this page as the starting point when checking whether a planning result is caused by a reusable rule rather than an operational assumption.

Organisation Structure

Purpose

Maintains the planning hierarchy:

Enterprise
→ Department
→ Queue
→ Work Type association

What it shows

Headline measures include:

  • active Enterprises;
  • active Departments;
  • active Queues;
  • Work Type associations;
  • structure health.

The hierarchy view shows each Department and its Queues.

Main actions

  • Add Department
  • Add Queue
  • assign or review Work Type
  • maintain active structure

Important ownership rule

Forecast and requirement are calculated at Queue level. Workforce supply and budget are managed at Department level. The hierarchy must not be interpreted as though each Queue owns a separate workforce supply pool.

Work Types & Requirement Methods

Purpose

Defines how different types of work are converted from demand into staffing requirement.

Typical Work Types

  • Voice
  • Email
  • Chat
  • Back Office
  • Social

Requirement methods

The assigned method determines which inputs are needed. Examples include:

  • Erlang-based Voice requirement;
  • workload-based requirement;
  • concurrent Chat requirement;
  • other method-specific calculations.

What it shows

For each Work Type:

  • requirement method;
  • method description;
  • required Queue planning inputs;
  • output interpretation;
  • associated usage.

Use this page when the calculation method itself is wrong or a new reusable Work Type is required. Use Queue Planning when only a Queue-specific driver needs changing.

Department Planning

Purpose

Maintains the current Department workforce baseline.

What it shows

For each Department:

  • starting FTE;
  • annual attrition assumption;
  • contracted hours;
  • configuration status.

How it is used

  • Starting FTE anchors the workforce supply calculation.
  • Attrition shapes expected background workforce loss.
  • Contracted hours help translate workload and people into comparable FTE

    • measures.

Planned future changes such as recruitment or temporary resource belong in Workforce, not in this baseline page.

Queue Planning

Purpose

Maintains the Queue-level assumptions required by the Queue's assigned Work Type and requirement method.

Possible Queue drivers

Depending on method, these may include:

  • AHT;
  • service level;
  • answer-time target;
  • occupancy;
  • concurrency;
  • productivity;
  • backlog or workload assumptions;
  • shrinkage or profile references where applicable.

What it shows

  • active Queue coverage;
  • Work Type and requirement method;
  • configured drivers;
  • missing or invalid assumptions;
  • ownership guidance.

How to use it

  1. select the Queue;
  2. confirm its Work Type;
  3. review only the fields required by that method;
  4. save the current baseline assumptions;
  5. use Transformations or Scenarios for planned future changes rather than

    6. disguising them as permanent Configuration.

Intraday Profiles

Purpose

Maintains the distribution of weekly demand across intraday intervals.

What it shows

Profiles are versioned and may include:

  • profile version;
  • confirmed date;
  • interval duration;
  • status;
  • interval demand or percentage shape;
  • weekly demand-shape chart;
  • total demand and profile coverage.

How it is used

Intraday profiles support interval-sensitive requirement methods, especially Voice and other service-level calculations.

Use this page to upload and confirm a representative interval shape. Scenarios may use their own curves where scenario drivers explicitly provide them.

Shrinkage Profiles

Purpose

Maintains the time not available for productive demand handling, such as leave, absence, training or meetings.

Profile levels

  • Enterprise profile — reusable standard inherited by Departments.
  • Bespoke Department profile — used where a Department needs its own

    • pattern.

What it shows

Enterprise component measures include:

  • current value;
  • annual average;
  • peak;
  • weekly pattern.

Department coverage shows:

  • inherited or bespoke profile;
  • configured factors;
  • current total;
  • peak total;
  • status.

Important calculation boundary

Shrinkage is a requirement-side factor. It changes the staffing requirement; it is not a demand transformation and does not directly change available workforce supply.

Ramp Profiles

Purpose

Defines reusable productivity curves for people who are not immediately fully effective.

What it shows

A ramp profile contains weekly productivity factors progressing towards full capability.

The page supports:

  • creating and editing profiles;
  • setting weekly values;
  • setting flat values;
  • updating selected weeks;
  • reviewing profile completeness;
  • checking where profiles are used.

How it is used

When a recruitment or workforce action uses a ramp profile:

Available new-starter FTE × ramp productivity
= Effective FTE

For example, 10 available FTE at 60% productivity contributes 6 effective FTE.

Budget

Purpose

Maintains the Department FTE ceiling used as financial context.

What it shows

  • current Department budgeted FTE;
  • effective-from date;
  • future budget changes;
  • current and planned status;
  • Department budget history.

Important distinction

Budgeted FTE is not:

  • available FTE;
  • effective FTE;
  • a workforce action;
  • an automatic instruction to recruit or release people.

It is the ceiling against which operational workforce and requirement can be compared.

Governance & Thresholds

Purpose

Maintains the tolerances used to classify planning health and materiality.

What it shows

It includes editable or visible rules for areas such as:

  • forecast variance;
  • Plan vs Actual tolerance;
  • material shortfall;
  • surplus attention;
  • forecast health;
  • Intelligence prioritisation.

How to use it

Change a threshold only when the organisation's interpretation of materiality has changed. Do not adjust a threshold simply to make an individual issue appear green.

The same rules are intended to be applied consistently across Workbench and Intelligence.