Announcing the ability to rotate automatic shifts in WFM

Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends
October 15, 2025 | October 15, 2025 | October 16, 2025

Zendesk is pleased to announce the ability to rotate automatic shifts in Zendesk Workforce Management (WFM).

This announcement includes the following topics:

What is changing?

Why is Zendesk making this change?

What do I need to do?

What is changing?

Automatic shifts in WFM now include an option to define a rotation period.

Defining a number of days or weeks for a rotation period will make the scheduling algorithm rotate users between different starting times, both flexible and specific.

At the start of each cycle the system will define the best starting time for each agent based on the forecast. The chosen time will be maintained for every scheduled day within a rotation period. For the next period the flow will repeat and new starting time may be selected.

For example, if you enter one week for the rotation period, users who start at 9:00 am can start at 11:00 am the following week, and so on.

Note that the algorithm can choose whether to rotate or maintain the same starting time for an agent in the next cycle to best meet the forecasted needs. If possible, and without compromising coverage, the algorithm prefers to implement a rotation.

Why is Zendesk making this change?

The most common schedule rotation pattern is to change agents’ shifts start time every other week. While it was possible in WFM to configure fixed shift rotations this way, automatic shifts did not have this option.

With this change, you can now utilize all the benefits of automatic shifts along with shift rotation. This allows you to achieve better coverage by scheduling people according to demand, variable and unbiased days off, shifts distribution, etc.

What do I need to do?

No action is required, and everything will continue to work as it did before. Consider exploring whether automatic shifts can now better meet your scheduling needs. To learn more, see Rotating automatic shifts.

If you have feedback or questions related to this announcement, visit our community forum where we collect and manage customer product feedback. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk Customer Support.