What's new

🚀 Your data, your way—now even more accessible

While we aim to create the most delightful user experience in our in-app reports here at Assembled, we know that you sometimes just need to export data and create pivot tables on your own terms. To this end, we’ve recently introduced:

• Agent states exports across all agents and contact platforms at the second level of granularity, thus allowing you to see where your agents are spending their time and which tickets are the most time consuming.
• A new staffing timeline export that allows you to calculate important metrics like shrinkage percentage, time spent on various scheduled activities, and more.
• An event change history log that simplifies audit compliance while giving your schedulers visibility into who’s making changes to schedules.

We know how important it is to meet you where you are. With Assembled, it’s always your data on your terms!

⚙️ Streamline time-off requests with our Workday integration

For those of you that use HR platforms, we know having a seamless way to import time-off requests into Assembled from an HRIS platform is essential for reducing manual work and the risk of errors. That’s why we’re excited to announce that time-off requests approved in Workday can now be automatically synced with Assembled.

Say goodbye to manually inputting the same time-off request in two different platforms and hello to better data visibility in one convenient location. You can find instructions for setting up your Workday integration here.

📅 A better schedule viewing experience for your agents

We know your agents spend a lot of time looking at their schedules, so we set out to make the viewing experience even more delightful. As we all know, 💗  happy + engaged agents = 📈 higher retention and even happier managers + WFMs!

Now, when agents are on their My Schedule page, they can edit events, undo and redo changes, make lightning-fast tweaks with intuitive keyboard shortcuts, and jump directly to any date they want to see.

Improvements

• There’s a new tooltip on the staffing timeline for when daylight saving time starts and ends.
• Time-off request denial reasons can now be viewed on the time-off requests page.

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🚥 Get a big-picture view of how agents spend their workdays

With Assembled’s new Aux Codes, agents can now track the time they spend engaged in activities outside of answering tickets—such as trainings, breaks, and lunch. This combined with automatic time tracking provides a comprehensive view of how agents are spending their workdays. Complete visibility into agent state data—as well as adherence and conformance for both productive and non-productive events—enriches shrinkage reporting and more. Get a sneak peek here.

Interested in enabling Aux Codes for your team? Contact your customer success manager or send us an email at success@assembledhq.com.

🔄 See how omnichannel ticket tracking impacts your staffing

Omnichannel, omniproblems. Today’s customer interaction lifecycle is more complicated than ever before. That’s why we built a new ticket lifecycle model that accounts for the growing complexity of omnichannel interactions. Understand how tickets that are transferred, escalated, and reassigned across channels and queues impact headcount requirements. With the tools to assess performance across internal and outsourced teams, you have everything you need to level up your coaching and ensure your vendors are on the same page.

This feature is currently in beta and available only for Zendesk users.

📅 Build flexible schedules with open shifts on templates

You needed more flexible scheduling templates and we understood the assignment. This new feature makes it easier for you to schedule agents on rotations, facilitate shift swaps, and assign agents to open shifts. If an agent changes teams then you simply remove them from the template but their shift remains for the next available one. Learn more here.

Improvements:

• Assembled users can now export staffing heat maps. Contact success@assembledhq.com to enable this feature.
• The staffing timeline now has event list exports.
• The audit ticket panel in the queue configuration page now has queue and channel fields.

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📅 The power of schedule change requests is now in agents’ hands

Talk about ✨agentsy✨ (like agency but for agents, get it?!) 👀. Agents can now propose changes to their schedule for managers to approve. Empowering agents while giving managers extra time back? That’s a win-win situation, if we ever saw one. This update also provides visibility into net staffing so managers can have a clear view of the implications of smashing that approve-event-request button.

If you’re interested in enabling this for your team, reach out to your CSM or email success@assembledhq.com 💌.

🩺 Time-off requests just got even more granular

Now, agents have the ability to submit even more granular time-off requests that account for exactly how many days and hours they plan to take off 🎯. Additionally, we record an agent’s PTO balance, giving managers even more visibility into the impact of each time-off request. Who doesn’t love more accurate schedule analytics reporting?

🥁 Drumroll please… our new Talkdesk integration is live!

You asked for it, we delivered 👊. We’re talking about our newest integration with Talkdesk, and we hope you’re as excited about it as we are! This integration means support teams that use Talkdesk can say goodbye to countless hours of manual scheduling and reporting ⏱️. Learn how to connect Talkdesk directly to Assembled here.

🔍 Inspecting your data has never been easier

With new improvements to how you create queues and organize incoming conversations, configuring your own Assembled instance is even more of a breeze 💁. This update also provides detailed views so you can see the conversations that compose each queue—and inspect your data in further depth! Learn more here.

Improvements:

• Save changes, edit events, and navigate to dates directly with the date picker on the My Schedule page.
• Filter by scheduling availability and/or skill when creating, saving, and editing people on templates.
• The realtime dashboard now sorts by adherence in descending order rather than state.
• Exporting email backlog tickets is now available on the staffing timeline.

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⚙️ Introducing HR Integrations—starting with HiBob

For those of you that use HR platforms, we know having a seamless way to import time-off requests into Assembled from a human resource information system is essential to supercharging your workflows. Putting the same time-off request in twice is a pain, and time is money! 💵

We’re excited to announce that we’ve built out the infrastructure to rapidly expand our HR integration catalog—starting with ✨HiBob✨—so you can seamlessly import your approve time-off requests directly into Assembled!

Learn more about our HiBob integration here.

📊 Dynamic average handle time for bullet-proof staffing

It’s no secret that meeting your SLA is only effective when staffing is optimized. And what’s a key ingredient for optimized staffing? Handle times that are reflective of your agents’ true productivity!

Instead of manually configuring these metrics, we can now forecast average handle times, email productivity and more based on actual data for each of your channels. Simply choose whether you’d like you these metrics to be dynamic or manually inputted and ❣️voila❣️—we’ll do the rest!

👥 Getting even more granular with 15-minute intervals

When fielding a lot of volume from live channels and evaluating SLA more granularly, shorter intervals can make a world of difference. That’s why we’re thrilled to share that we now offer 15-minute intervals for both forecasting and staffing.

Reach out to your CSM or email success@assembledhq.com if you’re interested in enabling this for your team!

📅 Supercharging your template experience with greater flexibility

To all our amazing schedulers—this one’s for ✨you✨. We’ve supercharged your template experience with the flexibility to clone a template and add or remove anyone. Say goodbye to fixed sites, groups, and teams and hello to full customizability! 😍

Additionally, we’ve enhanced our template application experience with the ability to customize recurrences. Do you schedule on rotations and need to apply a template on Tuesday and Thursday every two weeks? Every five weeks? We’ve got you!

Watch our first-ever product roadmap webinar

We launched our inaugural product roadmap webinar to give you a sneak peek at some of the amazing features coming down the pipe, as well as our overall vision. If you’d like to view the recording, request access here.

Improvements:

• Assembled admins can now set their statuses on Google Calendar events to free or busy
• We’ve added a new filter on the People page that allows you to see active or deleted users

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💌 Never miss SLAs with all-new email backlog forecasting

In a world where the majority of people prefer email support over other channels, CX teams have to contend with never-ending backlogs that are impossible to forecast and hard to prepare for. That’s why we had to build an email backlog forecasting model! Thanks to this game-changing feature, your email SLA will now account for existing and forecasted backlog and business hours. You’ll also be able to visualize historical backlog and see how it may change in the future. This is major for email-centric support teams, and unprecedented in WFM tools!

Get all the details on the launch❣️ here❣️.

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📈 Break down forecast totals by arrival pattern

This one’s for the workforce managers out there. Now, we dynamically generate forecasts based on imported (API or CSV) historical arrival patterns. For example, let’s say you are expecting 10,000 phone calls between May 1 - May 5. You can import this volume into the system and we will then dynamically generate an hourly forecast based on past arrival patterns for phone (taking into account the peaks and valleys where traffic can change).

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🔎 Filter schedule history and restore changes by agent

Effective scheduling requires meaningful visibility. This means knowing who made any changes, which changes were made, and when they were made. Now, you can easily view and revert schedule changes made for individual agents on the Staffing Timeline! Simply click below the forecasting panel to restore the specific version you’d like - it’s that easy! More details here.

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📅 Re-syncing Google Calendar events

Re-syncing Google Calendar events in Assembled is here! This ensures that event placement is up-to-date across both tools. Watch how it works here, and let your CSM know if you’d like this activated!

Improvements

• We are excited to announce our newest integration with Talkdesk, and enhance visibility into real-time phone data.
• Additional heatmaps are now available via a drop-down menu in the Staffing Heatmaps report.
• Improvements to time off notification emails - with more detail as to who denied the request and the reason.
• Added a “system setting” to light or dark mode that uses the browser default rather than a fixed setting - more details here.
• Open tickets in the realtime dashboard now match with totals in Kustomer.

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Copy and paste never looked so good ⌨️

Copying and pasting events for multiple agents on the Staffing Timeline is now possible in the day view. This is a major time-saver and workflow improvement, especially if you have many agents doing similar shifts throughout the day.

Even more staffing visibility with heatmaps on the Staffing Timeline 🧳

Things are heating up in Assembled. Now, heatmaps are available on the Staffing Timeline, which means that you can immediately visualize the impact of scheduling decisions on your overall net staffing.

You can also break down your net staffing by channel and see them all at once! This is highly beneficial for a majority of our teams who have agents working on both email + live channels concurrently while maintaining simultaneous coverage across multiple channels.

Time Off Calendar View and Filters 🗓️

Time Off requests are now viewable through a 📅 calendar view 📅, providing you with visibility on how many agents are taking time off throughout the month. Gone are the days of filtering for PTO requests on the Staffing Timeline and it’s time to say hello to a new, streamlined calendar view!

You are now able to filter time off requests based on:

1. Agent Characteristics (channel, queue, site)
2. Request Type (status, event type, etc)

This allows you to search for time-off requests even quicker than before, making it especially handy for teams with many agents.

People API 🫂

The People API has launched, allowing teams to programmatically create, modify and even delete People (what we call users) from their servers. This is especially useful for our teams with thousands of agents who prefer a streamlined approach towards user-management and integration capabilities with their own systems! You can access the API docs here.

Adherence API 📊

The Adherence API is now live, allowing teams to query for adherence related metrics such as adherence percentage, utilization and more directly from our API at the most granular interval levels. This is significant in enabling workforce managers, analysts, and a variety of folks across the teams we work with to perform their own adherence analysis. You can access the API docs here.

Improvements

• Copy-pasted template events are now considered manually edited events and will be preserved when a new template is applied
• Agents scheduled for events that are unmapped to any platform no longer show up above the fold; now you have to click on “show more agents” to see them.
• For Zendesk Email users - it is now possible to split the Zendesk (Online) state into two states: Online (Open Tickets) and Online (Closed Tickets). If you would prefer to not count the time that your agents are reviewing closed tickets in adherence, this one is for you! Be sure to contact your CSM if you’d like this feature enabled!
• Sorting is now deterministic; we tie break by name followed by email
• Fixed an issue related to channel matching on Kustomer
• It is now possible to calculate metrics from Kustomer based on one’s business hours. Be sure to contact your CSM if you’d like this feature enabled!
• Fixed horizontal scrolling issues across a number of reports

Introducing the Agent Scorecard report 📈

We have officially launched the Agent Scorecard report! This new report is aimed at providing you with a more comprehensive view of your agent’s overall adherence, as well as key metrics that measure your agent’s performance. We also provide the ability to display your agent's scores if a QA integration is enabled on Assembled.

For example, if you're trying to better draw relations your agent's adherence to their schedules for the past week, the Agent Scorecard provides you with the exact metrics to do so, without any significant effort.

We’ve written up a short document here for you to get a deep dive into our brand new report, and we’d love to hear what you think.

As part of the launch, we will also formally rename the Agent Performance report to the Team Performance report.

Improved Optimization flows ⚡

We’ve now created preset optimization cards for Lunch/Break events, as well as Standard events. For events labelled as Lunch/Breaks, we try to automatically find them on our customer’s behalf, reducing the manual configuration needed.

We’ve also improved the workflow, and created a short Loom for you here!

Simplified SLA tracking ⏲️

It’s now possible to select from hours, minutes or seconds when configuring your SLA metrics, and we also automatically do the conversion for you, based on the values that you fill in.

Improvements

• Fixed an issue where forecast data was showing incorrect values on the Staffing Timeline
• Fixed an issue where the forecast unexpectedly showed a spike in some channels
• Forecast numbers on the Staffing Timeline are now rounded to two decimal places
• Added a feature that allows for quicker re-provisioning of previously deleted agents
• Added a feature where it is now possible to use Shift + Click when attempting to select users in bulk
• Added a feature where it is now possible to drag and select an area on the Forecasts > Configuration chart to configure an outlier or adjustment
• Further improved the overall initial load time of the Staffing Timeline by 30%

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Better time-zone management ⏱️

All agent profiles now the agent’s local timezone, while automatically calculating and displaying the difference in time based on the user’s timezone.

New threshold settings 📊

We now allow for the setting of “less than” thresholds on our real-time dashboard, allowing you to have even more flexibility when keeping track of your data.

Improvements

• Fixed a bug where it was previously unable to delete all events from the multi-event modal
• The timeline header is now bolded for easier viewing
• Forecasts can now be generated far into the future. Reach out to our Support Team for more information
• User sessions now expire after 30 days
• The time period (AM/PM) is now automatically predicted when you’re creating a new event on the Staffing Timeline

Tracking changes to your schedules 👀

We’ve added a new feature that keeps track of all the changes made to your schedules, ensuring that no change goes unnoticed. This also serves as an easy way for users to automatically revert their schedules back to an earlier version. You can easily access this on the Staffing Timeline, by clicking on the “More” button located just below the graph.

Introducing keyboard shortcuts ⌨️

In addition to the Staffing Timeline V2 launch, we now have a diagram for all your keyboard shortcuts that you’ll need when creating schedules for your agents. Say 👋 to increased productivity!

Improvements

• Reduced initial page load times by 50% on the Staffing Timeline
• Users are now able to add People directly from the Staffing Timeline
• All customers are now able to upload conversation data via the Assembled dashboard
• Added detailed error messaging on the /agents/state API endpoint
• Fixed a bug where having both an API and contact centre integration would result in no data showing on the real-time dashboard

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New Staffing Timeline 🕹️

We’re thrilled to announce the New Staffing Timeline!

👀 Click here to watch a demo of the Staffing Timeline in action.

🗓 Click here for a complete list of all the features in this launch that will help make your scheduling experience more intuitive and efficient.

💡 Click here to access our blogpost.

Secure single sign-on via Okta

We now support single sign on via Okta. We’re officially on the Okta Integration Network and is Okta Verified. Contact us if you want to use Okta to sign in to Assembled.

Agent Flexibility

Agents can now allow their managers to edit time off requests before approval. Check the “Editable by Manager” checkbox when making a request as seen below.

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More ways to reach us

In addition to Slack and the chat bubble in the bottom-right corner of our app, you can now reach us directly from the Assembled up for submitting feedback or accessing support.

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Other features and fixes

• The Assembled Agents endpoint now returns the agent ID from Integrations like Zendesk and Salesforce. For more information on the endpoint see here.
• Added the ability to clear a person’s site

Better quality of life when scheduling

We've made a number of tweaks to improve your scheduling experience. We now smartly infer input times when you're creating or editing an event and have added a CMD+Enter keyboard shortcut to submit information in a create or edit event popover. We've also made the copy/paste behavior on the week view more predictable.

Event optimization improvements

We've taken your feedback and are continuing to improve event optimizations! You can now easily take existing optimization rules and clone them into a new rule. You can also more seamlessly use templates and optimizations at the same time.

Other features and fixes

• We fixed a bug that prevented Salesforce's Talkdesk connector from syncing certain metrics correctly.
• We improved the display of the queue settings.
• We improved the reliability of our Zendesk chat sync.
• We fixed a bug within the Forecasted vs Actual report that caused duplicate data for the day of daylight savings.
• We fixed a bug pertaining to uploading forecasts with invalid attributes.

Event optimizations

We've launched event optimizations! Check out the full blog post here.

More accurate agent states on Kustomer and Zendesk

Agent states are more powerful than ever! Our Kustomer integration now supports per-team agent states. If you're interested in trying out this feature, please contact us at support@assembled.

We also now report the "On Chat" state for all Zendesk Chat customers, providing more granularity in the realtime dashboard and allowing us to add occupancy to the agent performance report.

Other features and fixes

• We improved the accuracy of our first response time calculations for Zendesk Talk.
• We fixed a bug in our holiday forecast adjustments that was causing them to be lower than expected.
• We fixed a bug causing erroneous SLAs for a small number of customers under certain circumstances.

Smoother, more intuitive Events experience

• Agent schedules now jump to the first event in their view (for day and week view)
• Made a change to the "Event details view" menu that helps keep all details contained, especially when the description or link is long
• The Google Calendar marker on the Staffing Timeline now moves with events when dragged, and also hides events that have been filtered out
• Made it so that event edits via dragging are activated by a small activation area

Improvements to the reporting UI 

• Added a new metric to the Realtime dashboard which allows teams to measure work in more granular way (e.g., messages vs tickets)
• Added a newly virtualized schedule analytics report, which means way less lag on this report for larger customers
• Added selection arrows on the Agent Performance Report column headers to improve discoverability of sorting feature
• Added imported agent ID and email columns on Agent Performance and schedule analytics CSV exports
• Made it so that columns toggled on schedule analytics (count, total, duration) will reflect on the exported report.

Performance fixes, bug fixes, and feature optimization

• Fixed a bug with default queue mappings where sometimes a ticket would not get mapped to the default queue
• Fixed a bug where tags/keyword suggestions wouldn’t load in the “add queue” interface for select Kustomer users
• It’s now possible to add a Ticket exclusion for Zendesk Talk
• Users can now update teams via CSV agent upload

Make sure gaps in schedules are filled!

An all-too common scenario: an event that was created in Google Calendar gets pulled into Assembled and replaced a productive event. If that new event gets gets cancelled, deleted, or moved, it leaves a gap in an agent's schedule in Assembled. Now, Assembled will automatically (and intuitively) fill in the gap with the original productive event (that was replaced), which excludes things like lunch, breaks, or meetings that are set for a specific length of time. This means your agents are no longer wondering where they should be or what they should be doing if an event gets shifted!

New metric alert: messages sent

On the Agent Performance Report, you can see messages sent after choosing a custom time range, or when daily reports are re-generated. Note: this does not apply to Salesforce, which doesn't currently support messages.

Lightning fast backfilling and syncing

Now, backfilling and syncing is nearly 20x faster.

Performance fixes, bug fixes, and feature optimization

• Fixed a bug that prevented users from clicking “please connect agent profile” on the Realtime Dashboard
• Fixed a bug related to copy/paste row not working across days/weeks
• Fixed bug where tags/keyword suggestions wouldn’t load in the “add queue” interface
• Fixed a bug where shortcuts such as “delete” were firing and deleting events when a user was editing a text field
• Fixed a bug that was causing event changes in Google Calendar to not propagate correctly in Assembled
• Changed sorting arrow direction on the Agent Performance Report
• Added the ability to deactivate forecast models under /forecasts/manage
• Hid away the optional fields related to agents in the People creation/edit modal
• Added the ability for users to update teams via CSV agent upload
• Added imported agent ID and email columns on agent performance and schedule analytics CSV export
• Improved the movement of the Google Calendar marker on the Staffing Timeline
• Added selection arrows on agent performance report column headers to aid sorting

Optimizing the Google Calendar experience

• For teams using a team-wide Google Calendar, default event mappings are automatically created if they don't already exist, which helps ensure events are syncing into Assembled
• For private Google Calendar events, we no longer sync titles and descriptions, and will instead display "busy"
• We've fixed a bug that prevented users from deleting the Google Calendar integration if their Google account was no longer active
• We've added a triangle indicator (that can be turned on or off) next to events that originated in Google Calendar
• Google Calendar source markers now only appear in the Day view, vs Week/Month
• We now sync Google Calendar events up to 365 days into the future!

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Introducing a shiny, highly usable integrations page

• Users have more visibility into how their data backfills are going

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• We've improved validation for users when authorizing Zendesk
• Users can now disable and re-enable integrations on their own

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Get more out of your data in and across Assembled

• We've added support for viewing platform ids on the People page
• We've added support for exporting platform ids in the CSV export
• We now support copy/pasting events across windows, like between the Staffing Timeline and a template (so don't be alarmed if you see a pop-up notification asking for access to your clipboard!)
• We've added the ability to filter out deleted people on the People page - a popular user request!

Performance fixes, bug fixes, and feature optimization

• Users can now toggle between and promote any forecast model to be 'current', which will prompt a new forecast to be generated

• Updates to past events are now synced to Assembled
• We've fixed a bug with the menu overlap on the Staffing Timeline
• When agents swap shifts, the correct event name will now be displayed
• We've fixed a bug that was affecting forecast accuracy metrics with smaller time windows
• We've fixed a bug that was preventing agent states from being mapped via API.
• Full screen loading indicator is now Assembled-themed

‍Seamless event linking between Assembled and Google Calendar

Events that originated in Google Calendar are displayed in Assembled (on the Staffing Timeline and Agent calendars) with a direct link to the event day in Google Calendar.

Time tracking for Zendesk Support

Users now have more granular visibility into agent states within email-based support, which helps inform coaching and future staffing decisions. More detail here.

Updates to restricted site permissions

Teams with multiple restricted sites can now toggle between sites on their Realtime Dashboard. Before, they were only able to view the first restricted site listed. Additionally, restricted sites managers can now only undo the most recent group of event changes that they've made.

Easy ticket export based on contact platform

Users can export tickets to validate ticket mapping based on their contact platform. This can be done on the Queues page (dropdown) or on the Integrations page.

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Other features and fixes

• We optimized syncing between Google Calendar and Assembled.
• We made some updates to Staffing Timeline drop-downs.

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Deleted Person restoration

If you've deleted a Person (and chosen to keep their historical data), you can now restore them.

Faster, more fluid Staffing Timeline

We've made some infrastructure improvements to how we display the Staffing Timeline to help make the page faster! This improvement is especially relevant for users with a large number of agents.

Integration card for Zendesk Companion App

We've made our integration with the Assembled Zendesk Companion App more explicit via a shiny new card!

Other features and fixes

• The forecast accuracy config tool now uses 1-hour time intervals instead of 15-minute intervals.
• On the Templates page, you can now click the name of your template to open it, instead of using the View option (finally!).
• Fixed a minor visual bug on the login page.
• We improved some verbiage on our Queues page.

Vertical drag support on the Staffing Timeline

You can now drag events vertically, from one agent to another, on the Staffing Timeline.

More shortcuts for the Staffing Timeline

• You can now use the Shift key to select multiple events.
• After you select events, you can delete them with the Backspace or Delete key.

People page enhancements

We've made a number of enhancements to our new People page:

• We added support for viewing and editing Restricted Site.
• We added the ability to bulk edit people's Skills.
• If a person is Staffable, you can now click their name to view their calendar.
• When deleting a person, you can now choose between keeping or deleting their historical data.

Manager permissions

We've updated permissions to allow managers to add, invite, and export people. This makes their access more consistent, since they could already edit and delete people.

Faster Template application

We hate waiting for templates to apply too. So we've made some performance improvements that make template application much faster!

Other features and fixes

• Fixed an issue that caused the forecast panel in the staffing page to sometimes go blank.
• We added support for creating Kustomer queue mappings on queue ID.
• We fixed an issue where saving a template would fail if you had deactivated an person who had conflicting events on their schedule.
• We modified access rights to allow people with the Basic permission to set up an integration with Google Calendar for themselves.

Realtime accuracy improvements

We've made improvements to our Realtime infrastructure to help make your agent states data update even faster.

[Beta] Apply automatically generated schedules to the staffing timeline

We've added the ability to publish an automatically generated schedule to a your actual schedule! This is still in beta, but contact us at support@assembled if you'd like to learn more about this feature.

Enhancements to onboarding

Other features and fixes

• We fixed a bug that caused some of our forecasts to be shifted by an hour.

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Performance improvements

Actions like dragging, creating, and editing events on the Staffing Timeline are much faster, especially for companies with a large number of events. We've also sped up initial page loads for some problematic pages.

Refinements to the Forecast Configuration page

We've made a number of enhancements and quality of life improvements to the Forecast Configuration page. We have better visual explanations, improved loading screens, and better error messages on this page.

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Other features and fixes

• The Realtime Dashboard now links to the current Zendesk ticket that an agent is working on. This is available for anyone using the Assembled Zendesk Application.
• The Zendesk Chat Integration is now available for all customers and no longer confined to  customers on Zendesk's Enterprise plan.
• We fixed a bug that caused incorrect zoom behavior on the Staffing Timeline when viewing events within certain business hours.
• The Agent Performance Report now displays totals of each metric.

Agent Activity Report zoom

We added support for zooming in to specific time ranges on the Agent Activity Report to make it easier to understand the data.

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Other features and fixes

• We've made an infrastructure improvement that speeds up template application and CSV upload.
• We've changed some wording on Assembled to help improve clarity.
• We've standardized the way we show lists on Assembled to make it easier to take actions on a row.

Category-based agent state mapping

We've simplified agent state mappings by allowing you to assign entire categories of events to an agent state at once. For example, a single mapping can now be used to map all events that are classified as "timeoff" to the Zendesk Offline agent state. You can also map productive events by channel (e.g. all productive chat events) to an agent state.

If you'd prefer, you can always use the "Advanced" tab to map individual events to agent states as before.

Agent Activity Report + Zendesk ticket linking

The Agent Activity Report now shows a historical view of the ticket that someone was working on at any given time. The ticket will link back to Zendesk (if it originally came from Zendesk).

Clearer graphs for generated schedules

We've made the generated schedule graphs easier to read and understand at a glance.

Other features and fixes

• The Agent Performance Report CSV export now also includes columns for Channels, Sites, Queues, and Teams.
• The Schedule Analytics page is now sorted by name.

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Occupancy for Zendesk Talk, Twilio, and Serenova

We now show occupancy in the Agent Performance report for users integrating with Zendesk Talk, Twilio, or Serenova. Occupancy is the percentage of logged-in time that agents spend on call-related activities.

Refinements to Reports

• We now show all channels separately in the Agent Performance report when filtering by "All" channels, instead of averaging the data across channels.
• We improved naming on some metrics in the Agent Performance report.
• Agents can now see their own Agent Performance report. Please contact us at support@assembled.com if you'd like to enable this for your team.

Other features and fixes

• We've made an infrastructure improvement to speed up template application, and fixed a bug around applying templates.
• We've made some infrastructure improvements to speed up our API.
• Event categories are now displayed as "Default", "Productive" or "Timeoff". We think this is clearer than the separate "Productive" and "Timeoff" columns that we used to show.
• We now show all channels separately in the Agent Performance report when filtering by "All" channels, instead of averaging the data across channels.
• You can now add queue mappings to your Zendesk Chat integration.
• We've made some styling refinements across the application.
• We fixed a bug where the agent schedule page would sometimes not show any events.
• We've removed support for creating nested filters because they did not work as expected in some situations.

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Queue Mappings with Zendesk Talk

We now allow you to fine-tune your Zendesk Talk integration by setting up Queue Mappings. You can find more details here.

More keyboard shortcuts

Power users, we're showing you some more love this week! We've added some keyboard shortcuts to the Forecasted vs. Actual and Staffing Heatmaps pages to help speed up your workflows.

Other features and fixes

• We've reworked Zendesk Chat realtime reporting categories to improve clarity.
• We fixed the Template Undo feature.
• We've made an infrastructure improvement to minimized delays syncing events from Assembled to Google Calendar.
• We fixed a bug that prevented you from updating any users with restricted sites.

Light mode (and other usability improvements)

See our blog post for more details on the new Light Mode.

Staffing Timeline keyboard shortcuts

Power users, rejoice! We've added some keyboard shortcuts to the Staffing Timeline to help speed up your workflows.

Email SLA in Schedule Generations

We now calculate your forecasted SLA when you're generating schedules for email teams.

Agent Performance Report export

You can now export the Agent Performance Report as a CSV 📄.

Other features and fixes

• We’ll now load your event histories more quickly on the Staffing Timeline and on the Agent Overview page.
• We made some overall performance improvements to speedup a variety of pages.
• We made a performance improvement to help speed up Schedule generation.
• We fixed an issue with the appearance of the Staffing Timeline when using multiple secondary timezones.
• We've made Shift Flexibility available to customers again based on feedback we received.

Major improvements to user import

• When importing users, we now support filtering by Zendesk Group and Intercom Team.
• You can now add a Channel, Queue, Skill, Team, or Site to agents as you import them.

New Agent States interface

We've launched a new Agent States Settings interface to make it easier to understand your Agent State mappings at a glance. We think it looks a lot nicer too 💅.

Other features and fixes

• We now support restricted sites in the Realtime dashboard. If you have vendors, then you’ll only be able to see agents from your specific site in the Agent States section of the Realtime overview.
• We've added some styling refinements to improve the overall look and feel of Assembled.
• We've made the Forecast Accuracy report and the Forecast Alterations page load faster in many situations.
• We fixed an issue where some reports would cause Assembled to crash.
• We fixed an issue where some information panels on the Realtime page were hard to read.
• We fixed an issue that could occur with the “Keep manually edited events” feature in Templates.

Import from Intercom [Beta]

As a beta feature, we now support importing users directly from intercom. You can access this under the "Add" button at https://app.assembled.com/settings/team.

Sending invite emails in bulk

Administrators can now invite team members in bulk at https://app.assembled.com/settings/team. This will send an invite email to all the selected team members and allow you to set up your team more quickly.

Other features and fixes

• We've added some visual guides on the "Generate new schedule" page to help explain some of the requirement parameters.
• We've added the ability to name agent groups for future reference on the "Generate new schedule" page.
• We've removed the ability to save monthly templates. This feature caused some confusion because of ambiguity around the definition of a month.
• Our forecast accuracy report now excludes outliers from the calculation of weekly or daily variance.

Realtime Agent States for Salesforce users

We now support showing realtime data for users who add an integration with Salesforce. Contact us at support@assembled.com if you'd like more details on setting this up.

Generated Schedule deletion

Users can now delete generated schedules from an overflow menu on the Generations page. Contact us at support@assembled.com if you'd like more details on using the Generations page.

Other features and bug fixes

• We fixed a bug where clicking "View Details" on an agent from the Staffing Timeline would take you to the wrong schedule.
• We've made it so that once a platform integration is added (e.g. Kustomer, Zendesk), we automatically generate a forecast for you.

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Account Settings redesign

We've redesigned the settings page, grouping together related settings. We hope this makes it easier to find the setting you're looking for.

Agent Activity Report

We've created a new report that shows a single timeline of activity across multiple platforms. It provides minute-by-minute details of an agent's activity and schedule adherence.

Other features and bug fixes

• We fixed a bug where the event type dropdown was hidden by additional timezones.
• We've refined the design for the modal showing an agent's Google Calendar integration.

Multiple persistent secondary timezones

We've made it easier for you to operate with teammates in different locations. You can now add multiple secondary timezones on the Staffing Timeline. In addition, the secondary timezones will be saved between each login.

Other features and bug fixes

• We now export data for both Zendesk Talk and Zendesk Email when you export ticket mapping data.
• We've fixed a usability issue that made it hard to submit forms in schedule generation.
• We now prevent accidental extra login attempts for slow connections.

Assembled App for Zendesk

We've launched the Assembled App for Zendesk, which allows agents to view their own schedules as well as team schedules directly from within Zendesk. Learn more here.

Other features and bug fixes

• We've fixed an issue where long numbers on the Staffing Timeline would overlap with the next cell.
• We've fixed an issue that prevented the dragging of certain events in the Staffing Timeline.
• We've made it easier to bulk upload agents by providing a CSV of agent information to upload.
• When creating a new event type, the shortened display name is now automatically populated as the long form name to allow for easier editing.
• We've worked with a number of our customers to ensure that our Kustomer Integration provides even more accurate data than before. In particular, we've ensured that our Service Level numbers are much more accurate than before.
• We've fixed an issue where the previously submitted value wasn't cleared after creating a new filter.

Conversations API

You can now send Assembled conversation data via our API. If you've built your own platform or are using an unsupported platform, this allows you to populate data within Assembled and receive forecasts and historical reporting.

Improved heatmap visualizations

We've made visual improvements to our heatmap reports. They now better distinguish gradations in values by default, enabling you to understand the distribution of data more easily.

Other features and bug fixes

• You'll now see the last editor and time of edit for an event by default.
• We fixed an issue which allowed email logins with trailing spaces.
• We've updated the loading page for the Staffing Timeline and made it less invasive.

Ability to set minimum staffing

You are now able to set the minimum required number of people for any interval. This is especially useful for small teams that want to ensure all hours are staffed with at least a certain number of people.

Improved Google Calendar Sync

We've fixed multiple bugs related to the Google Calendar read sync. Removing agents from your Google Calendar event will now correctly delete the event in Assembled for those agents for a number of different cases. We've also improved the UI to make it clearer which syncs you have authorized.

Other features and bug fixes

• Average handle times and first response times in Kustomer are more accurate and now correctly reflect data from third party platforms connected to Kustomer.
• We've made general UX improvements to the Agent Performance page.

Improvements to settings pages

We've redesigned the Filter Settings and API Settings pages to make them easier to use. You can now create new API keys and revoke existing API keys.

Holiday forecasts

We've automatically run adjusted forecasts so that you can better plan your staffing for the holiday months. These forecasts take into account previous years of holidays.

Other features and bug fixes

• We've made the verbiage on the Realtime Overview more consistent with the platforms where the data comes from.
• The Agent Calendar will now indicate when events have a description.
• We've added the ability to export ticket data to check your ticket mappings.
• We've made performance improvements so that initial page loads happen more quickly.

Improvements to Ticket Mappings

You are now able to explicitly exclude tick using the Ticket Mappings in the integration settings page. We've also made some general improvements to Queue Mappings.

Redesigned Agent Overview

We've redesigned the agent overview page to provide a cleaner way to visualize an agent's information. Agents should have an easier time seeing their schedule and filter values.

Other features and bug fixes

• We've launched a CSV Upload for conversation data. For systems that don't have a direct connection with Assembled, you can upload conversation data which can then be forecasted in Assembled.
• We've made a number of bug fixes and improvements to the reverse sync for the Google Calendar integration.

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Group by on realtime dashboard

The realtime dashboard now allows you to see how agents are performing based on team, site, or queue. You can use this to get a quick sense of how a support team is doing across a large number of agents.

Other features and bug fixes

• We fixed an issue in the reverse google calendar sync that was causing duplicate events
• We improved the calculation for average handle times and service level statistics on Kustomer and Salesforce.

Improvements to the Forecasted vs Actual Report

You can now choose an arbitrary time frame for the Forecasted vs. Actual Report and have the data broken down into either hourly or daily granularities. This makes it much easier to see service levels and contact volume over time.

Other features and bug fixes

• The graphs on the Staffing Timeline now show actual opens + reopens when looking at email contacts (as opposed to just opens previously).
• We've made performance improvements and some UI improvements to our Realtime Dashboard.
• We've significantly increased the speed of our Salesforce integration and decreased the number of API calls we make.
• We now display the number of unsaved changes in the tab bar title when you're making changes on the Staffing Timeline.

International date and time formats

We now support the ability to format dates and times according to your location. You can change your date format to one of a number of different locales (e.g. America MM/DD/YYYY or Great Britain DD/MM/YYYY).

Improved integrations with Kustomer

It's now easier to configure your integration and data mappings with Kustomer. You can now quickly change how data from Kustomer gets moved into Assembled.

Other features and bug fixes

• Users can now disable the Google Calendar integration directly from Settings → Integrations
• We fixed an issue that prevent charts on the Staffing Timeline from showing very granular events
• We fixed an issue that caused templates to apply in the incorrect timezone under certain circumstances.

Bulk upload of users

You can now upload a large number of users and agents via CSV in the Team Settings page.

Other features and bug fixes

• We've introduced an option to apply a template and allow conflicts between template events and any existing events on the schedule
• We've fixed some styling issues on the modals that appear on the Staffing Timeline
• We've fixed an issue causing the forecast accuracy report to show an incorrect loading spinner
• We've fixed a number of issues related to the Google Calendar read sync

Improvements to Google Calendar syncs

You can now edit and delete events that have been pulled into Assembled from a Google Calendar. This will allow managers to update events and staffing calculations directly in Assembled without having to go back to Google Calendar to make changes. We also fixed some issues preventing swapped shifts from syncing.

Other features and bug fixes

• We fixed an issue that prevented the unsetting of agent emails and imported ids
• We streamlined the user experience on the filter settings page

API endpoints for Forecasts and Requirements

You can now retrieve Assembled's hourly forecasts or provide your own forecasts directly via our API. In addition, we've updated our /requirements endpoint to include the required hours and required staffing we project based on these forecasts.

Improvements to the Staffing Heatmaps Report

We've added more descriptive tooltips to the Staffing Heatmaps. You can now hover over a cell in the heatmap to see information about how a requirement was generated or the predicted service level given your scheduled staffing.

Other features and bug fixes

• Administrators can now bulk export names, emails, and other user information from the team settings page
• We fixed an issue that prevented shift swaps from being synced to Google Calendar

Improvements to the Staffing Timeline

We've made many styling and interaction updates for the Staffing Timeline, including better styling for long event descriptions, fixed timezone offsets, more consistent menus when creating an event, and much more. We've also rolled out full support for Chromebook users, who previously had issues with interactions involving meta keys.

Improvements to Google Calendar syncs

Managers are now able to unsync a user's calendar. A number of other issues and inconsistencies with Google Calendar syncs have been addressed as well.

Other features and fixes

• We've fixed an issue preventing the removal of a start or end date of an agent
• You can now filter results of the "/assembled now" Slack command by queue, team, and site
• Deleting a filter now gracefully handles the case where a user had it set as the default
• We've simplified the design of the filter management page in settings

Improvements to Google Calendar syncs

We've made a number of improvements to the stability and usability of our Google Calendar syncs. We've also streamlined the process for customizing the mapping of Google Calendar events to Assembled events.

Other features and bug fixes

• We now allow you to filter activities retrieved from our API by activity type id
• We now have the ability to retrieve incomplete calls from Zendesk Talk for use in forecasting and reporting
• We fixed an issue that caused slightly incorrect forecasts for email messages
• We fixed an issue that would cause some modals to close when highlighting text input

Improved integrations with Zendesk and Intercom

It's now easier to configure your integration and data mappings with Zendesk or Intercom. Our data feed also runs more quickly with close to realtime volume data.

Lots of bug fixes

We've invested a lot of effort in reducing the number of bugs that users run into. Most prominently:

• We reduced the time it takes to edit an event on the Staffing Timeline
• We fixed an issue which would cause our staffing graphs and charts to not update in certain cases
• We fixed an issue that caused query volume to not be aggregated correctly when filtering by parent queues
• We fixed an issue that showed incorrect counts on the template pagination display
• We fixed and issue that prevented filters from working correctly on the Agent Performance Report

Streamlined scheduling for teams

We've launched major improvements to our scheduling experience. New features include copy and paste, default event types, drag creation of new events, and much more. Together, these updates provide a smooth and improved scheduling process for teams of all sizes.

Customizability in the Google Calendar integration

The reverse Google Calendar sync allows teams to bring events from Google Calendar into Assembled. Now, you can customize how keywords in Google Calendar events get mapped to specific event types in Assembled. For example, an event with the string [1-on-1] in the title could automatically populate as a 1-on-1 event type in Assembled.

Other features and bug fixes

• The API now supports a third-party identifier for creating an activity type that is reflected in another system
• Previously approved time off events can now be cancelled, with schedules updated accordingly
• We’ve made interactions on the Staffing Timeline up to 33% faster in scenarios with granular intervals and lots of events

Improved team administration

We've made a number of performance improvements to Settings > Team. The page now loads over 10x faster on average, which should be especially evident for large teams. In addition, you can now search by someone's full name as well as their email.

Improved event editing

Dragging or resizing an event on the Staffing Timeline now creates an outline visualizing the pending change. We've also made major performance improvements when performing these actions, as well as when creating or editing events.

Other features and bug fixes

• Create activities in bulk via the API
• Include existing forecasts and requirements when generating schedules
  
• We now correctly count productive and unproductive events in the Schedule Analytics report

Major improvements to Templates

We've introduced a sortable list view to make it easy to see everything clearly when you have a lot of templates. We've also made a number of performance improvements when applying them.

Sync events onto a Primary Calendar

Our previous Google Calendar integration synced events from Assembled into a Secondary Calendar. With the new Primary Calendar feature, you can now sync directly onto the same calendar you use for meetings, sharing with coworkers, and other planning. Click here to learn more.

Major improvements to Forecasting

We broadly revamped our infrastructure to support the prior holiday season. In addition, we now support basic forecasts based on 4 or 8-week average volume, which can be compared against our custom machine learning-based models. Finally, we added support for forecasting inbound Messages, in addition to Cases or Tickets. Contact us if you'd like to learn more.

Security features

Changing your password now requires you to re-enter your previous password. We've also made several backend changes suggested by our security partners. Contact us if you'd like to learn more.

Other features and bug fixes

• Configure the start of the week to Sunday or Monday. Contact us if you'd like to make this change
• We now correctly truncate events longer than the template time range when saving a Template
  
• We now correctly indicate the current time when custom business hours are configured

Visual improvements to Staffing Timeline

We’ve made many small changes to improve readability within the Staffing Timeline. In addition, you can now add a second time zone to the header, which makes it easier to schedule across different time zones. This functionality is also available in Templates, making it easier to create templates for multiple regions.

Set rules for Time Off

We now support automatically approving or denying requests for any combination of agent attributes (queues, sites, etc). This means you can set one rule for everyone working the “Support" queue as well as a different, more specific rule for those working in the "Support" queue and based in the “Portland” site. Contact us if you'd like to learn more.

Smarter Templates

Applying templates now is smarter: instead of deleting any events that overlap existing ones, we keep the parts of the event that aren’t conflicting.

Other features and bug fixes

• Set per-agent skills, analogous to queues, sites, etc.
• Create, edit and delete queues, teams, sites, and skills via the API
  
• We’ve standardized terminology across the application and site

Simpler, more intuitive navigation

We’ve rebuilt our navigation bar to make it easier to find what you’re looking for on Assembled. In addition, we’ve reorganized various settings pages to make configuration more straightforward. Finally, we’ve standardized lexicon across the application and our Help Center.

Smarter defaults

We’ve researched which settings, such as sorting and event history, are most impactful for day-to-day users. We’ve broadly improved the defaults for new users, allowing them to be more productive, sooner.

Sync events in from Google Calendar

In addition to syncing out to Google Calendar, we’ve had lots of users ask for the ability to sync events into Assembled. We’ve already seen this feature used in a broad array of workflows: to schedule team meetings or 1:1s, to indicate availability, and even to add basic reporting to Google Calendar events. Contact us if you’d like to try this feature.

Other features and bug fixes

• Track how closely our forecasts track with actual incoming tickets. Contact us if you'd like to learn more
• Create, edit, and delete event types via the API

Kustomer integration

We now have an out-of-the box integration with Kustomer. Now Kustomer customers can use Assembled to generate forecasts and determine staffing needs. If you use Kustomer and want to up-level your support team, contact us to learn more.

Major improvements to existing integrations

We’ve improved the way we backfill data from Zendesk after you hit connect—this way you can get up and running with Assembled faster. As a result, we’ll also be able to generate more accurate forecasts with a larger volume of data. We’ve also significantly improved the performance and stability of our integration with Google Calendar.

Other features and bug fixes

• Update multiple schedules via the API
• View reasons when reviewing time off requests
  
• We fixed an issue where the start of the week was sometimes saved incorrectly

Intercom integration

Our out-of-the-box integration with Intercom is now out of beta. Thanks to Hopper and various others for their feedback and early partnership! You can learn more in the Intercom App Store or by contacting us.

Undo applied templates

Templates allow you to make sweeping changes to the full team schedule. However, this can also make them stressful or unwieldy to use. We now support the ability to undo changes from a just-applied template.

Improved usability of Schedule Analytics

We added permanent scrollbars to the Schedule Analytics report, which is one of our most heavily used reports. In addition, we added the ability to select and deselect all metrics, which simplifies configuration for users with a large number of event types.

Other features and bug fixes

• Timezones now use location-based identifiers like America/Los Angeles
• We fixed an issue where drag-and-drop did not work consistently for multiple selected events
  
• We fixed an issue where Reverse Google Calendar Sync did not reflect modified or deleted events
  

Improvements to scheduling

We’ve made usability improvements to scheduling within the Staffing Timeline. Specifically, we've made it easier to create and edit events by: adding search for all event type fields, ensuring new events respect the boundaries of existing events, and improving various design elements, such as the preview circle. Finally, we fixed a bad bug that caused schedule changes to be hidden after using Undo and/or Redo.

Secondary queues

You can now distinguish an agent’s queue from their secondary queues. This allows you to view all agents who can flex into other queues when needed, even if they don't normally handle that type of work. To enable this feature, please contact us.

Queue level configurations

We now support queue-specific configurations for inputs such as handle time and target response time. This allows you to account for queues that may have very different characteristics, such as a low-touch generalist queue versus a high-touch specialist queue. See here for more on how to configure staffing requirement calculations.

Other features and bug fixes

• Time off requests now display with a simplified time range
  
• We fixed an issue where ticket metrics for Zendesk were empty in the Realtime Overview

Improvements to scheduling

We’re continuing to make improvements to the overall scheduling experience. We’ve updated our font to make schedules easier to read, added a setting to show the start time and duration directly on an event’s display block, and revamped each event’s time input. We’ve also made various usability updates to the Staffing Timeline.

Easily customizable data mappings

Account administrators can now easily change data mappings for our Zendesk and Kustomer integrations. You can use keywords to map tickets and cases to specific queues and change these data mappings dynamically. To enable this feature, please contact us.

Other features and bug fixes

• Our API now allows you to create or delete activities on non-master schedules
  
• Secondary queues can now be updated in bulk
• Timeoff Requests can now be imported into Assembled through a CSV upload
  

API client for Go

We’ve released an official Go client to make it easier to integrate with the Assembled API.

Improved design on the Staffing Timeline

There is now an option to “Show Event Times” which will display an event’s information in the timeline display. We’ve also improved some slow and cumbersome hover interactions on the Staffing Timeline.

Other features and bug fixes

• Administrators can now cancel time off requests that have not yet been approved
  
• We’ve made general performance improvements across the application
• We fixed an issue where parent filters would sometimes not show agents belonging to child filters