Staffing templates define how many people you need. 

They answer one simple question: How many people should be working, and when?

Without this, scheduling is guesswork.

Why staffing templates matter

You cannot build a proper schedule without knowing the demand.

Staffing templates tell Cirrus Calm:

• How many people are needed per skill
• When they are needed
• Where gaps exist

They drive:

• Automatic scheduling
• Coverage checks
• Staffing insights

If this step is skipped, everything becomes manual.

How staffing templates work

Staffing templates are built per skill and per time block.

You define:

• Minimum staffing
• Maximum staffing

For each part of the day.

Example:

This tells the system how to plan your team.

Before you start

Make sure:

• Skills are created
• Minimum staffing is enabled on those skills

Only skills with minimum staffing enabled will appear in the template.

Create a staffing template

Follow these steps:

1. Go to Staffing Templates
2. Click New staffing template
3. Enter a clear name
4. Choose to copy from an existing staffing template if required.
5. Choose a cycle if needed. When using schedules for even and odd weeks, choose 2 here. This is useful, for example, when certain employees have a day off every other week.
6. Add router/queue per skill. This is where the magic happens! Here you can tie/link a Calm skill, with a queue/router in Halo. If you do that, then Calm will do all the background calculations for you in future steps so that the staffing template is populated based on actual historical Halo interaction data.
7. Save

Your template is now ready to configure.

Set staffing levels

Staffing templates use a simple paint style setup.

Skills with a lightning bolt icondenote that the skill has been linked with a queue/router in Halo, and therefore the template will automatically insert the required staffing levels, which cannot be edited.

1. Open your staffing template
2. Select a day
3. Enter minimum and or maximum values

4. Drag across the time blocks for a skill
5. Save

This lets you quickly define demand across the day.

Staffing levels linked with Halo

If you linked Halo routers/queues with a skill, you are able to click on the lightning bolt icon, which will display the previous year of interaction data for the specific day. 

Use the dropdown to show the occupation calculation for a specific day of the week.

Minimum vs maximum staffing

Minimum staffing

The minimum number of people required.

If you drop below this, you are understaffed.

Maximum staffing

The upper limit.

This helps prevent overstaffing and wasted hours.

Using skill groups

If skills are grouped, they appear together.

This allows you to:

• Set staffing at group level
• Manage related skills together

Example:

• Calls UK
• Calls EU

Grouped under Telephony

You can manage total telephony demand instead of each skill separately.

Best practice

Keep it realistic.

• Base numbers on real demand
• Focus on critical skills first
• Avoid overcomplicating templates
• Review regularly as demand changes

Start simple. Improve over time.

Common mistakes

1. No staffing template. You end up building schedules manually every time.
2. Unrealistic numbers. Leads to constant understaffing or overstaffing.
3. Too much detail too early. Makes templates hard to manage.

How this is used

Staffing templates feed directly into:

• Shift templates
• Automatic scheduling
• Staffing views

This is the engine behind your planning.

What next

Once your staffing template is ready:

👉 Shift Templates

This is where you build your actual schedule.