Patent ID: 7660407

Claim:
A method for scheduling contact center agents, comprising: generating a forecast requirement related to a volume of contacts to be handled by a remote contact center; transferring the forecast requirement from a local contact center to the remote contact center, wherein the remote contact center generates work schedules for agents of the remote contact center based on the forecast requirement and skills of the agents of the remote contact center; receiving information corresponding to the work schedules and the skills of the agents of the remote contact center that shares contacts with the local contact center, the information being contained in an export file, wherein the work schedules comprise activities; importing the information into a database, the database being accessible to a workforce manager application associated with the local contact center that is operative to retrieve information stored in the database; correlating the skills contained in the export file with skills that are to be used for scheduling agents of the local contact center; correlating the activities contained in the export file with activities that are to be used for scheduling the agents of the local contact center; and generating work schedules for the agents of the local contact center using the information from the database, the work schedules being based, at least in part, on a correlation between the skills of the agents of the remote contact center and the local contact center, a correlation between the activities of the agents of the remote contact center and the local contact center, and an evaluation of the work schedules of the agents of the remote contact center.