WFM UK: Activity-Based Scheduling: Activity Drivers

Overview 

Activity Drivers are used in Activity-Based Scheduling functionality to record measurable activity within a business. Examples of Activity Drivers are rooms occupied, number of check-ins, number of check-outs, number of breakfasts, number of bookings etc.

Activity Drivers can be used to calculate the required number of hours to be scheduled in the Labour Standards calculations for the Performance Edition.

Activity Drivers can be configured to be used as sales revenue. These values can then be used to calculate the Department's wage costs. 

For users to be able to create and edit Activity Drivers, the user-level permissions as shown in Fig.1 will need to be applied.

• Go to Scheduling> Settings > User Levels > Edit User Level
• Tick the box against Create and Edit Activity Drivers and Save the changes

Fig.1 – User level permissions

• With the permissions applied, navigate to the Activity Based Scheduling section and select Activity Drivers

 A list of existing Activity Drivers for the organisation will be displayed in the onscreen table – see Fig.2.

Fig.2 - Activity Drivers table

Creating New Activity Drivers

• Go to Settings > Activity Based Scheduling> Activity Drivers > Create New
• Populate the following fields:
  • Label - the name of the Activity Driver displayed to the end-user
  • Code – Activity Driver code used for updating Activity Driver values through integration
  • Foreign ID – external ID (code can be repeated here)
  • Is calculated? – if ticked, search for Activity Drivers to use in the calculation. Activity Drivers assigned to at least one department in that location can be used in a calculated Activity Driver. Calculated Activity Drivers cannot be manually updated - they are a sum of 2 or more Activity Drivers. Ticking this will reduce the settings options below
  • Is Currency - displays £ symbol on Activity Driver Main page
  • Use Sales for Departments Labour Cost - if configured, the value for the activity driver will be considered the sales for the departments that the activity driver is assigned to (only displayed if Is Currency is enabled)
  • Is Total Location Revenue - Assign to all Locations - only one can be configured per organisation; this will be treated as the total location revenue for each location.
  • Is Available for Display on Forecast? - determines if the Activity Driver is displayed on the Forecast page
  • Number of Decimal Places - this is only displayed if the Activity Driver is displayed on the Forecast page
  • Is allowed Manual Override? - allows the end user to edit the forecast value through the Forecast page
  • Hidden - if the Activity Driver is to be hidden from the Forecast page - it could be a seasonal Activity Driver which is only displayed during certain periods of the year 
  • Assign Activity Driver to Location/Department - select location/Department(s) that the Activity Driver will be assigned to. The Activity Driver can be assigned to multiple locations but the value will be location specific 

Fig.3 – Activity Driver Assignment 

Activity Drivers that have been configured to be available on the Forecast page can be found by navigating to the Forecasting tab in Activity-Based Scheduling.

Forecast/Actual Activity Driver Input Screen

• Go to Scheduling > Forecasting

Fig.4 – Activity Driver Forecasting page

As shown in Fig.4, there are 2 rows displayed - one to record actual and one to display forecast Activity Driver values.

• Actual and Forecast Activity Driver values can be input if the user has the associated user-level permission, and the  Activity Driver setting Is allowed manual override has not been ticked. 

Creating New Calculated Activity Drivers

• Go to Settings > Hotels > Activity Drivers > Create New
• Populate the following fields:
  • Label - the name of the Activity Driver displayed to the end-user
  • Code – activity Driver code used for updating Activity Driver values through integration
  • External ID – foreign ID
  • Is calculated? – only Activity Drivers assigned to at least one department in that location can be used in a calculated Activity Driver. Calculated Activity Drivers are not displayed on the Sales Forecast page and cannot be manually updated - they are a sum of 2 or more Activity Drivers
  • Activity Drivers – list of Activity Drivers for the organisation will be able to be selected from the drop-down, type to search
  • Is Available for Display on Forecast? - determines if the Activity Driver is displayed on the Forecast page
  • Assign Activity Driver to Location/Department – as long as the selected Activity Drivers are assigned to at least one department in that location then the calculated Activity Driver can be assigned to any Department in that location

Fig.5 – Creating Calculated Activity Drivers

The calculated Activity Drivers are not displayed within the user interface. They are simply a sum of the selected activity drivers and are used when calculating the required hours through the labour standards functionality.  

Creating Total Location Revenue Activity Drivers

• Go to Scheduling > Settings > Activity Based Scheduling > Activity Drivers
• Create a new Activity Driver
• Enable Is currency?
• Enable the setting Is Total Location Revenue - Assign to all locations - This activity driver will be automatically assigned to all locations using Activity-Based Scheduling and will also be added to any new locations created
  • This Activity Driver is considered the Total Location Revenue for the location. This will be used in Fourth Analytics for reporting purposes
  • The total location revenue Activity Driver can be used as the sales for departments when calculating the department's labour cost. Assign the departments from the department selector which are going to use total location revenue to be used when calculating the labour. If departments are going to use different sales values than the total location revenue then do not assign the departments, simply create a new activity driver which is  currency activity and configure it to be "Use Sales for Departments Labour Cost" then assign this to the relevant departments. Multiple currency activity drivers can be used as the sales for departments

Fig.6 – Creating a Total Revenue Activity Driver