Use this article to understand what calendar settings control in Workforce Management, see which activity types your workspace has configured, and know which ones count as productive scheduled time. This article is for teammates with the "Can manage Workforce" permission.
Note: Workforce Management is included in the Pro add-on.
What are calendar settings in Workforce Management?
Calendar settings in Workforce Management are the activity types used to categorize every scheduled event on a teammate's calendar, such as Inbox Time, Lunch, or Training. Each activity type is marked as either productive or non-productive. Productive activity types represent time spent handling conversations in the inbox, and that time contributes toward scheduled headcount, adherence, and conformance calculations. Non-productive activity types cover everything else, such as breaks, meetings, and time off.
Every workspace configures its own activity types under Workforce > Configure > Activity Types.
Common examples include:
Activity type | Productive? |
Inbox Time | Yes |
Phone time | Yes |
1:1 | No |
Ad Hoc Meeting | No |
Break | No |
Customer Call | No |
Knowledge | No |
Lunch | No |
Out of Office | No |
Public Holiday | No |
QA Review | No |
Sick Leave | No |
Team Meeting | No |
Training | No |
PTO | No |
Note: Where a productive and a non-productive activity overlap on a teammate's schedule, the overlapping time counts as non-productive.
How to create an activity type
Activity types are the building blocks for teammate schedules. They become available as event type options when building schedule templates, and as filter and dropdown options when reviewing or editing schedules. Creating one needs the "Can manage Workforce" permission.
Click New activity.
Give it a name.
Toggle Productive (counts towards staffing calculation) on or off.
Assign a color for display in the schedule view.
Click Create.
The new activity type is immediately available as an option when building schedule templates and when editing schedules on the Staffing Timeline. Productive activity types are also used as an input into staffing calculations in the Forecast section.
How to connect your Google Calendar
Workforce reads events across every teammate's calendar and writes published schedules back. Connecting is managed per teammate, with connection status shown per workstream.
On the Connections tab, click Connect under "Connect your Google Calendar".
Under Connected Calendars per Workstream, each workstream shows how many of its teammates have connected their calendar, for example "2/13 connected". Expand a workstream to see individual teammates.
How to set up calendar sync and mapping rules
Go to Workforce > Configure > Calendar > Settings to control how events sync between Workforce and Google Calendar. These settings apply to every connected teammate in the workspace.
Sync direction
Two sync directions can be toggled independently:
Workforce > Google Calendar - automatically creates events in Google Calendar based on events in Workforce.
Google Calendar > Workforce - automatically creates events in Workforce based on events in Google Calendar.
Mapping rules
Mapping rules classify Google Calendar events into activity types based on the event title.
Each rule matches on a title condition and maps to an activity type:
For example, a rule where Title contains "inbox" maps to the Inbox Time activity type - any Google Calendar event with "inbox" in its title is classified as Inbox Time.
Click Add mapping rule.
Choose a condition: contains, is exactly, or starts with.
Enter the text to match in the event title, for example "lunch".
Choose the activity type to map matching events to.
Click Add.
Delete a rule using the trash icon next to it.
Need more help? Get support from our Community Forum
Find answers and get help from Intercom Support and Community Experts