Account admins and owners can set a schedule for your Zendesk Support instance by selecting a time zone, defining business hours, and setting up holidays.
If you don't provide 24/7 support to your customers, you can acknowledge your availability and give customers a better sense of when they can expect a personal response to their support requests. Even if you do provide 24/7 support, you can enhance your workflow by setting up views, triggers, automations, and reports based on your business hours set in your schedule.
Zendesk Support schedules do not apply to Chat operating hours. SeeCreating a schedule with operating hours.
Watch the video below to learn how schedules can impact customer experience and team reporting.
Setting a schedule for Zendesk Support
Your schedule includes a time zone and specific business hours each day in a weekly schedule for Zendesk Support.
You can also set up holidays as exceptions to the business hours set in your schedule. You can add as many holidays as you like, and they will be treated as outside of business hours and not count toward any metrics you measure in business hours.
After you set a schedule, you can create business rules based on the business hours in your schedule. You can also use business hours in reporting.
- InAdmin Center, click
Objects and rulesin the sidebar, then selectBusiness rules > Schedules. - ClickAdd scheduleto create a new schedule. Or, click an existing schedule to modify it.
- On the schedules page, enter aSchedule nameand choose aTime zone.
- In theWeekly schedulesection, keep the preset business hours or modify them.
You can modify your business hours in 15 minute intervals.
- To move a block of time, drag the time block up or down on that day.
- To change the start or end time, drag the top or bottom of the time block.
- To remove hours from a day, click the X in the upper-right corner of the time block. The day displaysClosed.
- To add hours to a closed day, click anywhere on the closed day. A time block appears where you clicked.
The hours you set are relative to the time zone set for your Zendesk account (unless you are on an Enterprise plan, and you selected another time zone for your schedule). SeeSetting the time zone and format for Zendesk Support.
- When you are finished, clickSave.
- If you want to set any holidays as exceptions to your scheduled business hours, selectHolidaysand then clickAdd holiday.
You can schedule holidays up to two years in advance.
- Enter aName为假期click in the first date field to pick a start date and click in the second date field to pick an end date.
You can choose a single day (by picking the same start and end date) or a date range (by picking different start and end dates). You cannot set a partial day holiday.
- ClickConfirm. You can add multiple holidays by clickingAdd holidayagain.
The holidays you add appear in your list of holidays in chronological order.
- ClickSave.
- (Enterprise plans only) Click the back arrow to return to theSchedulesadmin page, then clickAdd scheduleif you want to set multiple schedules.
Note:If you set up multiple schedules, the first schedule in the list is your default schedule and applies to all tickets. You can create triggers to apply different schedules to tickets (seeApplying your schedules to tickets).Now you can use business hours in business rules, reports, Talk, and Liquid markup:- For more information about business rules and reporting based on business hours, seeCreating business rules based on business hoursandReporting based on business hours.
- For information on assigning Zendesk Support schedules to individual Talk numbers, seeUsing multiple schedules for Talk. Talk numbers with a Zendesk Support schedule will only route calls during Zendesk Support scheduled business hours.
Tip:If you added holidays, be sure to check out Liz Rosen's community tip,Holiday auto-responses made easy.
Deleting a schedule (Enterprise plans only)
如果你在一个企业计划,创造了multiple schedules, you can delete a schedule if you need to. When you do so, it's immediately removed from your account, and your Zendesk will use calendar hours, unless you have another schedule in place or add a schedule back to your account.
If you want to stop using business hours in your account, remove all schedules.
To delete a schedule
- InAdmin Center, clickObjects and rulesin the sidebar, then selectBusiness rules > Schedules.
- From the list of schedules, hover over the schedule you want to delete.
- From the schedule options menu, click删除.
Managing your holidays
Your scheduled holidays appear in chronological order in your holidays list. You can click any holiday to expand it and show details or to collapse it and hide details.
Your upcoming holidays are shown by default, but you can filter by past holidays. You can edit or delete, any upcoming holidays.
- InAdmin Center, clickObjects and rulesin the sidebar, then selectBusiness rules > Schedules.
- (Enterprise plans only) Click the name of a schedule on theSchedulesadmin page.
- Click theHolidaystab.
- From the list of schedules, hover over the schedule you want to edit.
- From the holiday options menu, clickEdit.
- Make any changes you need.
- When you are finished, clickConfirm.
- In theHolidaystab of your schedule, click the options menu beside the holiday you want to delete, then select删除.
- Click删除holidayto confirm the deletion.
The holiday is removed from your list of holidays.
Applying your schedules to tickets (Enterprise plans only)
If you're on an Enterprise plan and create multiple schedules, the first schedule in the list is your default schedule and is used for all tickets. You can create triggers to apply different schedules to tickets.
You need to create a trigger for each schedule you want to use for your tickets.
- InAdmin Center, clickObjects and rulesin the sidebar, then selectBusiness rules > Triggers.
- ClickAdd trigger.
- On the Add new trigger page, enter a name and optional description for your trigger.
- Add conditions for your trigger.
The conditions will determinewhichtickets get the schedule you set in the next step. For example, you might chose the conditionticket group isto set a schedule for a specific group. Or you might decide to set the schedule based on the ticket's brand or status. It's up to you.
- Add the actionTicket: Set schedule, then select one of your schedules from the dropdown list.
- ClickCreate.
If you need to find out which schedule is applied to a ticket, you can view that ticket's events (seeViewing a ticket's audit trail).
Creating business rules based on business hours and holidays
You can create views, SLA policies, triggers, and automations based on your business hours. You can create triggers based on holidays.
Any views, triggers, or automations based on business hours also take scheduled holidays into account, and consider them as outside of your business hours, unless you have set up a holidays trigger.
You can also use the Liquid placeholder for business hours in macros, triggers, and automations.
ticket.in_business_hoursViews based on business hours
You can create views based on business hours by using any of the "Hours since" conditions:
Hours since created
Hours since open
Hours since pending
Hours since on-hold
Hours since solved
Hours since closed
小时后分配
Hours since update
Hours since requester update
Hours since assignee update
Hours since due date (for tickets with the type set to Task)
Hours until due date (for tickets with the type set to Task)
Hours since last SLA breach
Hours until next SLA breach
Then, select one of the "(business)" options to calculate time based on your business hours.
If you are on an Enterprise plan and have multiple schedules, views based on business hours will use the schedule applied to the ticket.
For information about creating views, seeUsing views to manage ticket workflow.
Triggers based on business hours
You can create triggers based on business hours using the "Ticket: Within business hours" condition.
This enables you to build triggers that fire based on whether an event occurs during business hours or outside of business hours. For example, you might create a trigger to escalate a ticket filed by a VIP customer outside of business hours.
If you are on an Enterprise plan and have multiple schedules, triggers based on business hours will use the schedule applied to the ticket.
For information about creating triggers, seeCreating triggers for automatic ticket updates and notifications.
Automations based on business hours
You can create automations based on business hours by using any of the "Hours since" conditions:
Hours since created
Hours since open
Hours since pending
Hours since on-hold
Hours since solved
Hours since closed
小时后分配
Hours since update
Hours since requester update
Hours since assignee update
Hours since due date (for tickets with the type set to Task)
Hours until due date (for tickets with the type set to Task)
Hours since last SLA breach
Hours until next SLA breach
Then, select one of the "(business)" options to calculate time based on your business hours.
If you are on an Enterprise plan and have multiple schedules, automations based on business hours will use the schedule applied to the ticket.
For information about creating automations, seeStreamlining workflows with time-based events and automations.
Triggers based on holidays
You can create triggers based on holidays using the "Ticket: On a holiday?" condition. This enables you to build triggers that fire based on whether an event occurs during a holiday.
This condition is set to yes for the full day of the holiday, not just during your normal business hours that day. For example, if you have a Monday holiday and your normal business hours on Mondays are 9am to 5pm, the holiday is considered the full calendar day, including hours outside of your normal hours, such as 10pm.
If you are on an Enterprise plan and have multiple schedules, this condition respects the list of holidays set in the schedule applied to the ticket.
Creating triggers based on multiple schedule (Enterprise plans only)
If you are on an Enterprise plan and have created multiple schedules, you can create triggers based on multiple schedules.
Use the "Ticket: Schedule" condition to build triggers that fire based on the schedule applied to a ticket.
Use "Ticket: Within schedule" condition to build triggers that fire based on a selected schedule.
You can use the "Ticket: Set schedule" action to apply a schedule to a ticket. For more information, seeApplying your schedules to tickets.
Reporting based on business hours
You can use Zendesk Explore to build reports based on business hours set in your schedule.
If you are on an Enterprise plan and have set up multiple schedules, reports based on business hours use the schedule that is set for the ticket (seeApplying a schedule to your tickets). To find out which schedule is applied to a ticket, you can view that ticket's events (seeViewing a ticket's audit trail).
You can build reports based on business hours using any of the following Explore metrics:
- First reply time - Business hours- The duration between when the ticket was created and the first public agent reply on the ticket within business hours.
- First resolution time - Business hours- The duration between when the ticket was created and its first resolution within business hours.
- Full resolution time - Business hours- The duration in minutes between when the ticket was created and its latest resolution within business hours.
- Requester wait time - Business hours- The number of minutes a ticket spends in the New, Open, or On-hold status during business hours. This number is only measured after a ticket's status is changed from New/Open/On-hold to Pending/Solved/Closed
- On-hold time - Business hours- The total combined time in minutes that the ticket was in the on-hold status during business hours.
- Agent wait time - Business hours- The total combined time that the ticket was in the pending status within business hours. It measures how long agents were waiting for the customer replies within business hours.
For information about Explore seeZendesk Explore resources.
93 Comments
I'm struggling with setting holidays. I've tried various browsers (Edge, Chrome, FireFox) and all the same. The issue is that even after clicking 'Save' the Cancel/Save buttons remain:
If I switch to another page and back to schedules, the holiday is not saved.
If I click cancel I am told I have unsaved changes:
Seems whatever I do the 'Save' button isn't working?
What am I doing wrong?
Hi there,
We are Zendesk professional subscribers and yet I don't see the "Schedules" option in Settings? Am I missing something?
Hi Yedudah,
Thank you for reaching out. Based on your e-mail address, your account is subscribed to the Team plan. If this is a mistake, please reach out to your Account Manager for clarification that you are supposed to be subscribed to Professional. You are correct that for a Professional subscription and above, the Business Schedule setting is available.
Cheers,
我有代理在不同的时间表但我们普杜拉。布辛ess hours are set separately (so an agent might work 9-5 but we are open for longer than that). How can I make it so that the SLA doesn't penalize an agent for not responding when they aren't working. In other words, setting an agent's schedule which is separate from the business hours so that it's fair for all agents. Hope this makes sense, thanks!
Hi@...-
Thanks for reaching out! So the SLA is generally an end-user-focused metric. That is to say, even when your agents go offline, the end-user is still waiting for an answer, so the SLA is still in danger of being violated. The best practice here would be to have the team collaborate on tickets that are near breach. There are other options as well, of course, such as setting the ticket to pending which would force (some) of the SLA timers to pause, but at the end of the day your customers are still waiting for an answer. Hope this helps!
Brandon
Thanks for your quick reply,@.... I see what you mean about the SLA being customer-facing as opposed to a way of measuring agent performance. Thanks!
Hi.
Let's say an agent usually works Monday-Friday, 9am-6pm (let's call it Schedule1). But as of a certain date his schedule has been extended and was changed to Monday-Saturday, 9am-6pm (let's call it Schedule2). And when this new Schedule2 kicked in this agent still had some older tickets open. So these older tickets started out being marked with Schedule1 for a few days but in the middle of their life cycle the agent's schedule changed to Schedule2 and that was reflected on those tickets.
So the questions are:
How will Zendesk calculate all the usual KPIs (full resolution, initial reply, etc)? Solely based on Schedule1? Solely based on Schedule2? Or will it calculate using both depending on the date of the marking of the ticket with each schedule?
We usually have a lot of schedule changes due to campaigns so I'd like to know what Zendesk's expected behavior is in these situations.
Thank you.
HiCarlos Santos-
If you have one business schedule, it will automatically be applied to every ticket. When you have multiple business schedules defined, you have the flexibility to specify which business schedule is applied to which ticket and when via Triggers. So, in theory, you could setup a Trigger that says: If Ticket is Updated and Assignee is changed to Agent, Set Schedule to X.
That being said, we traditionally see schedules aligning more to the business hours of operation vs. any one agent (ie, we're open Mon-Sat 9A-6P). That way, your SLAs around business hours are tied to your actual business hours and not any one agent's schedule.
At the end of the day, we tend to think of SLA's from the customer's perspective vs the agent. If you're looking for more of a WFM tool, I would suggest looking at layeringTymeShifton top.
Hope this helps!
Brandon Tidd
729 Solutions
Hi,
May I know what's different between "Ticket: Schedule" and "Ticket: Within schedule" conditions at "Creating triggers based on multiple schedule"?
Use example in this article
If condition is
Ticket: Schedule | Is | Americas support hours
I think trigger will filter the tickets apply to "Americas support hours" schedule.
then, what's different with condition?
Ticket:Within schedule | Americas support hours
Is this condition filter the different tickets? If true, what kind of tickets it filter?
Hijohn_weng 翁維澤,
Happy to help here. The first example does identify tickets that have the Americas Support Hours schedule. The second example allows you to compare the ticket update time toanyschedule, not just the schedule applied to the ticket. So while choosing Amercas support hours for both should yield the same tickets, you could get a bit more nuanced with Tickets Within Schedule. For example, you could set Shift A to be from 8A-12P and Shift B to 12P-5P and then take a certain action on tickets (add a tag, route to a group, etc). If the ticket was created or updated within a specific shift schedule, without having to worry about breaking your SLAs which would most likely be based on your "Americas Support Hours" schedule.
Hope this helps!
Brandon Tidd
一天意味着(开始和结束日期相同)11/26 the whole 24 hrs. (11/26 - 12: 00am 11/26 - 11:59 PM ) even its says expired before the day ends- is it correct?
HiAnita Rajkumar-
That is correct. The checkbox will fire at the beginning of the time off but it is valid for the full day.
Brandon
Hi,
Is the ability to schedule holidays only available to the account owner, or is there a way to transfer this to administrators?
Thank you
Sam Evans-
Anybody with the role of Administrator should be able to adjust schedules & holiday settings out of the box. If you are not seeing this on your end, I would suggest you use the in-product "get help" feature to connect with a member of our advocacy team. Thanks!
Brandon
Should I delete holidays that have passed? Will this affect any metrics?
Hi Dave and thanks for the reply. Your response makes complete sense and I can definitely see the danger in deleting a holiday as recent as that. I was thinking more about holidays from years past; such as all of the 2020 holidays that have long since passed and I cannot see any reason these would affect any tickets of any status.
Well, after a few years, I can imagine a looooong list of old past holidays that I have to scroll past to get to the bottom of the list.
Needs Correction:
The link under 'Admin Center' in the following para is incorrect:
To set your schedule
Cheers!
Is there a setting to enable Schedule settings for custom roles outside of Administrator?
On some holidays we will work reduced hours (e.g. only 9-5 instead of 7-7). Is there a way to set this up? Right now, looks like we either have to flag it as a holiday or be penalised for the hours outside of that day's schedule.
Thanks!
Josh, unfortunately there is no Schedule permission available for custom roles outside of the Admin role. We have documentation that goes over what permissions agents with custom roles can have and that setting is not listed. More info can be found here:Creating custom agent roles
Fiona, I apologize for this limitation but currently there is no way to set a holiday for modified business hours. The only option available with holidays is to set a certain day as closed. One option you have is to note ahead of time what days you will have reduced hours and modify the weekly schedule ahead of time (day or so before.) I know this is not ideal but is one way to preserve your metrics and business hours with little interruption.
Hi all
How many schedules are supported in Zendesk (Enterprise)?
HiChad Susa (Gravity CX - Zendesk Partner)
On Enterprise you can create as many schedules as you need. Note, however, that Zendesk thinks about schedules from the customer's perspective vs. the agent experience. For instance, you might have a division that operates in the US and another division in the UK that need two different schedules. In other words, you wouldn't have a unique schedule for each employee, and there's a bit of a glass ceiling on how many different time zones your company can operate in. That being said, I've never seen an upper limit on the number of schedules. Hope this helps!
Brandon
Is there a way we can set the Holidays to be recurring every year? For example, 1st January will be a Holiday every year. Right now I have a yearly reminder to update this, but would make sense if I can automate some of these.
As of the moment, recurring holiday is not yet a supported feature. I'd recommend creating aCommunity postseparately for that with your use case to help get more visibility and votes on the idea. Then, others can share their use cases to further drive demand for that feature. In addition, there's also some third party apps available in the marketplace with the same functionality.
Hi all,
I would like to do a certain action on a group of tickets (using a specific form) , on Saturday. Meaning all the tickets i recieve on this form (from monday to Friday) , do some action on saturday. how can i achieve this? Thank you
We have schedules set up in ZD but still have to manually open and close our phone lines... is there a way to automatically have the 'our office is closed' messaging turned on in IVR according to this schedule? Thanks. Derek
Pleasesign into leave a comment.