What it does

Integrates WFM shift schedules with unified routing. When enabled, the routing engine checks a rep's active shift booking before assigning work, preventing assignment to reps who are off-shift, on break, or on approved time off.

Key facts

• Requires WFM package installed, user management configured, and shift schedules published: without active shift bookings, enabling the toggle has no effect
• Approved time-off blocks routing eligibility for that period automatically: no manual queue membership adjustment required
• Shift availability becomes an eligibility condition alongside presence, capacity, queue membership, and skills
• Single enable toggle: Copilot Service admin center → Operations → Workforce management → Shift & Schedule Management → Shift-based routing
• Standalone only

When to use / skip

Turn this on as part of WFM go-live, it's what makes schedules actually matter for routing. Without it, schedules exist but don't affect work assignment. Wait until shift schedules are published before enabling.

Configuration decisions

None beyond the enable toggle, routing behaviour derives from published shift bookings and approved time-off records.

Gotchas

• Don't enable before schedules are published. Enable too early and reps with no shift booking get locked out of routing entirely. Publish at least one full week of shifts in production before you flip the toggle.
• Test with one rep first. Pick a test user with a known shift, verify work blocks outside shift hours, then roll out.
• Time-off auto-blocking is the win here. Show this in the handover: approve time-off → rep automatically disappears from routing for that period.

Consultant notes

• The sequencing dependency here is harder than it looks in practice. You need WFM set up, schedules published, shift bookings confirmed, and then shift-based routing enabled: in that order. If any step is incomplete, enabling the toggle early locks reps out of routing silently. Put the enable step explicitly at the end of the WFM go-live checklist, not the beginning.
• Use the one-rep test approach religiously before rolling out to the team. Pick someone with a clear shift boundary (e.g., 9–5), verify that work stops routing to them outside those hours, then approve a time-off period and confirm they disappear from routing automatically. That test sequence validates the three main behaviours in ten minutes.
• The time-off auto-blocking story is one of the cleaner WFM wins to demonstrate in the handover. Supervisors are used to manually removing agents from queue membership when they're off: showing that approving time-off handles this automatically tends to land well.

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Source last updated: 2025-04-14 | Check this if: Shift-based routing rolls out to embedded, or WFM routing integrations expand