Skills define the work that needs to be done in your contact centre.

Think of skills as the building blocks of your schedule. If your skills are wrong or missing, your schedule will never work properly.

Why skills matter

Before you can schedule anyone, you need to define:

• What tasks exist
• Which tasks are critical
• How many people you need on each task

Skills drive:

• Automatic scheduling
• Staffing requirements
• Replacement suggestions
• Reporting

If this step is rushed, everything else becomes harder.

Create a skill

Follow these steps:

1. Go to Skills
2. Click Add skill
3. Fill out the details

Name

Clear and simple. Example: Calls, Live Chat, Back Office

Type

The type controls how the skill behaves.

Choose from:

• Regular for normal work
• Leave for planned time off
• Illness for sickness or unplanned absence
• Break for scheduled breaks

Use the correct type so reporting, absence, and scheduling work as expected.

Colour

Used in the schedule so you can quickly see who is doing what. Pick colours that are easy to scan at a glance.

Priority (optional)

Priority tells Cirrus Calm which skills should be filled first during automatic scheduling.

Priority levels are:

• Very low
• Low
• Neutral
• High
• Critical

Use a higher priority for skills that protect service levels, such as calls or live chat.

Use lower priority for work that can wait, such as admin or non-urgent back office tasks.

Enable for new employees

When enabled, this skill is automatically added to new employees.

Use this for common skills that most agents should have.

Do not use it for specialist skills unless every new employee should receive that skill by default.

Minimum staffing

Enable this when the skill needs a staffing target.

When enabled, the skill appears in staffing templates. You can then set the minimum and maximum number of employees needed for each time block.

Use this for critical work such as:

• Calls
• Live Chat
• Email
• Front Desk

This helps Cirrus Calm spot gaps and plan the right number of people.

Exclude from headcount

Enable this when employees assigned to the skill should not count as available headcount.

Use this for skills such as:

• Leave
• Illness
• Training
• Lunch

This keeps your staffing numbers accurate.

Adherence handling

Enable this when the skill should be included in adherence tracking.

Use this for skills where employees are expected to be working in the contact centre platform.

Example:

• Calls
• Live Chat
• Email

Do not enable it for skills like lunch, leave, or training unless there is a clear reason.

4. Click ‘Save’. Your skill is now ready to use in scheduling.

Edit or delete a skill

To update a skill:

1. Open Skills
2. Select the skill
3. Make your changes
4. Save

To delete:

• Open the skill
• Click delete

Be careful. Removing a skill can impact existing schedules.

Best practice

Keep it simple.

• Do not create too many skills
• Use clear names your team understands
• Set priority only where it matters
• Always define minimum staffing for critical work

If your skills are clean, your schedule becomes much easier to manage.

What next

Once your skills are set up, move on to:

👉 Employees to assign people to these skills

Without this step, the system cannot match work to agents.