Business hours define when your agents are available to handle requests. You may have different teams or groups working across various time zones, regions, and shifts, which means they have different working hours. You can set unique business hours for each group, ensuring that their service level agreements (SLAs) match their actual working hours.
For example, say your IT operations are split between the US and Singapore teams and handled in the following shifts:
9 AM to 5 PM EST, handled by the US team (Day shift)
5 PM to 1 AM EST, handled by the US team (Swing shift)
1 AM to 9 AM EST (2 PM to 10PM SGT), handled by the Singapore team (Night shift)
By defining business hours for each shift, you ensure that SLAs account for the team's working hours. So, if your US team works from 9 AM to 5 PM EST and a request is assigned to them at 6 PM, the SLA will pause until their next working day.
This prevents unnecessary SLA breaches and ensures that the team is not penalized for requests assigned outside their working hours.
Setting up business hours
Workspace admins can set up multiple business hours and associate them with specific agent groups within the workspace.
Navigate to Settings > Your workspace > SLA, then select the Business hours tab.
You can edit the default business hours to reflect your standard working hours by clicking on the ellipsis(...) next to it and then selecting Edit.
Default business hours apply to a group without custom hours assigned, and to requests when no group is assigned.
Click on Add at the top right to create a new set of business hours.
Provide a name to differentiate between different schedules (eg. ITOps-Singapore or ITOps-US) and select the relevant timezone.
Select the days of the week when your team will be working.
You can configure working hours for each day of the week, adding multiple time blocks to account for breaks or shifts. Each time block should always end later than it starts, following the natural order of time. For example, if your US team (day shift) works from 9 AM to 5 PM with a break at 1 PM, you can create time blocks for 9 AM to 1 PM and 2 PM to 5 PM on the same day to cover all the hours when they will be available.
Click on Apply to against any day to copy the time blocks to other days of the week. Time blocks cannot span across midnight to extend across multiple days.
If your business hours span midnight, create two time blocks: one ending at 11:59 PM on the first day and another starting at 12 AM on the following day to cover the remaining hours.
So, for your night shift team working from 5 PM to 1 AM with a break at 9 PM, set it up like this:Create two time blocks for Monday: 5 PM to 9 PM, and 10 PM to 11:59 PM (after the break)
For Tuesday, create one time block from 12 AM to 1 AM (continuing from Monday), and then add 5 PM to 9 PM and 10 PM to 11:59 PM for Tuesday’s shift
Apply these time blocks for Wednesday to Friday
Lastly, add a time block on Saturday from 12 AM to 1 AM for the end of Friday’s shift
If your team operates around the clock, choose the 24/7 schedule option. This is ideal for teams offering continuous support across multiple timezones.
Click on Save.
Managing holidays
You can add holidays to business hours to ensure SLAs account for non-working days.
Navigate to the Holiday list tab for any set of business hours.
Click on Add to add specific holidays manually. Choose whether the holiday is a one-time event or repeats yearly.
You can also bulk-import holidays by uploading an ICS file. Click on Import and select the required ICS file.
All imported holidays will be set to repeat yearly. To change this, click on the ellipsis(...) next to the holiday, then select Edit and select the One-off holiday checkbox.Click on Save.
Assigning business hours to groups
Once your business hours are set up, you can assign them to specific groups within the workspace. For example, assign the ITOps-US schedule to your US team and the ITOps-Singapore schedule to the Singapore team.
Navigate to Settings > Your workspace > SLA, then select the Business hours tab.
Click the + icon under Associated Groups next to any set of business hours, then search for the required group to assign it to those business hours.