Inbound call forecasting and scheduling (data format?)

[vermorel]

I am currently developing an open source reporting utility for inbound call volume forecasting and staff scheduling.

Basically, the context is quite similar the discussion at
Excel and Forecasting

My main concern is the following: what are the data format that I must support to let call center professionals easily import their inbound call activity data?

Obviously, I can come-up with yet another TSV or CSV format, but it's likely to be a pain for the users.

What would you suggest? Any documented data format available?

Thanks in advance,
Joannes Vermorel
http://www.lokad.com/

[IOrtega]

I think that CSV should cover most situtations. Most databases export and can import in that format. The ideal solution would be to have some data adapters connecting directly to the database. Here are some ecport formats that are provided by some of the reports available to us (CSV,DBASE2,DBase3,DIF,Excel,Excel5,HTmlTable,PSRe port,SqlInsert,Sylk,Text,Wks,Wk1,WMF)
Let me know if you need someone to test the model. I can run it against some of our data. We currently do not fo any forecasting, but I have started looking into it. I think I will go with the Excel (erlang) solution for now.

[vermorel]

IOrtega, thank you very much for this great feedback. We have followed your idea of data adapter, we a GUI to design the required SQL query, see
Adapter editor for Call Center Calculator

We have also included some native support of Excel
Import Excel data in Call Center Calculator

Do not hesitate to send me some data sample if you think that further data format should be supported.

Best regards,
Joannes