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 aNamefor the holiday, then 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)
如果你是在一个企业发展se plan, and have created 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.
- 在添加新的触发页面,输入一个名称,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
小时以来assigned
Hours since update
Hours since requester update
小时以来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.
如果你是在一个企业发展se 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.
如果你是在一个企业发展se 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
小时以来assigned
Hours since update
Hours since requester update
小时以来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.
如果你是在一个企业发展se 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.
如果你是在一个企业发展se 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)
如果你是在一个企业发展se 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.
如果你是在一个企业发展se 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
HiDerek Feswick
爱你的头像!讨论路由,实际ly a per-line setting that allows for you to either "Always Route Calls" or route calls based on a schedule of your choosing. If you select the latter, any new calls that come in outside of hours will be offered your "Outside of Schedule" voicemail (if enabled) or "No Available Agents" greeting Voicemail is off. You can find these settings in the Admin Center under Channels > Talk > Phone Lines > [Selected Line] > Routing/Voicemail Tabs.
Hope this helps!
Brandon
We just started covering 24/7. We had reporting built to track calls outside of our original schedule from 8-6 so we could get a sense of after hours volume prior to launching 24/7 coverage. We primarily use talk and SMS.
I'd still like to measure calls between 6 PM to 8 AM and on weekends separately. How do I get this set up?
If you still have your query for the original schedule, you'll just have toduplicateit for you to have one that will be used during the weekends. You can also share it here for us to have an idea on how it was setup. If there's any issue on extracting the correct data, you can直接联系支持so that we can further check it.
I have set up the notification as instructed, but if I test a ticket that spans business hours it seems to notify me as if it was "(calendar) less than". For example:
business hours end at 5pm, first reply SLA is 3 hours, condition is Ticket:Hours until next SLA breach, (business) less than, 1.
If I create a ticket at 4:30, I get the notification at 6:30(ish) instead of the next day when business hours start. (should be roughly 1.5 hours into "tomorrow's" business hours.)
Charles Nadeauthe video on this page seems to be broken.
Hi @Adam: The video is fixed now. Thanks for pointing it out.
Charles Nadeau, any thoughts on the potential bug I found?
HeyCharles Nadeauit sounds like maybe your actual SLA policy is set to calendar hours. There's a small toggle at the bottom of each priority column. If that's set correctly, we can create a ticket to investigate further. Let me know what you find out!
Brandon
Thanks for the response,Brandon TiddOne and only one SLA...
That doesn't sound right - I'm going to have someone open up a ticket for you regarding this. Thanks for sharing, and best of luck getting this resolved quickly!
ThanksBrandon Tidd! Please let me know if there is anything you need from me regarding repro information, etc. Is there a ticket elsewhere for me to follow?
HiKirby Drumm-
Nothing further at this time - I've pinged a member of the community team & requested that they create a support ticket that will be associated with your email that you use to log into the community. Your inbox should have more information soon!
Brandon
Thanks!
Next to the already discussed option to have a recurring holidays option, I'd also like to see the option to have the same holidays apply to the different available schedules. It makes no sense to have to do that more than once if the holidays are identical.
Hi Everyone,
Let's do a quick round robin of Community Support!
Derek Feswick首先,爱你的阿凡达!是的,这是彼得ible to associate the line itself with a particular business schedule.
Viktor Hirstovski- This one is a bit more complex, but you could potentially take advantage of thedue date field, paired with an automation. Another option would be to review SweetHawk'ssuite of appsas they have a few options that might be helpful here.
Jeremy Mifsud, Dane's comment is correct, and actually Zendesk will only let you schedule out holidays up to two years in advance. I know the pain of manually creating holidays across multiple schedules, which is why I built theHolidayZapp, which might help speed things up for you. PS -Fiona WithamI thought the same thing... you might consider adding your use case to myCommunity poston the topic.
Have a great day/night everyone!
Brandon Tidd
729 Solutions
Hi there,
hope you are fine
one question, i shared my schedule list with you, i want to know that Is it possible to see which agents have been assigned to the business hours definitions here? For example which agents are defined for TR office ?
thank you
HiEmre Aktaş-
Thanks for reaching out. In Zendesk, Schedules are tied to tickets / requests opposed to Agents themselves. In our case - we are creating schedules based on when the ticket is received to account for when the requester should expect a response. IE - if someone emailed the office in Sofia at 7PM, that would be out of office for them, so presumably they wouldn't be responsible to respond until 9AM the next day.
For Workforce Management & scheduling of Agents, I would recommend a WFM tool such asTymeShift.
Hope this helps!
Brandon
Hi Brandon,
i didnt mean that actually, i just want to know that for example whicht tickets group or agents are in TR Office business hour, how can i find that ?
Thanks.
Hey Emre,
Sorry for the confusion, but the schedule is applied to the ticket object itself, not the group or agent. So, if a new ticket is created and you use a Trigger to set the schedule to TR Office Business hours, then that ticket will be associated with the TR Office Business hours, regardless of which agent (or group of agents) that ticket is assigned.
The purpose of the Schedule function in Zendesk is not to track employee hours but rather to track operating hours for your end-users to understand when they can expect a response.
Another way to think about it is if your department schedule is "9-5" and someone emails you at 2AM, you would most likely expect the response to come during your normal business hours, not at 2AM. This is why even if you have multiple teams working across multiple time zones, the schedule is associated with the ticket itself.
Brandon
so how can i find this assignment, or triggers? how this setup was maden i want to find this.
Hi Emre,
The details for this are listed above under "Applying your schedules to tickets."
Hope this helps!
Brandon
Brandon Tidd, would love to help diagnose the potential bug I found but I haven't received anything regarding an issue. (referring tohttps://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408842938522/comments/4599328384282)
HeyKirby Drumm
Let me escalate this again - thanks for flagging!
Brandon
thanksBrandon Tidd！!!
HiKirby Drumm-
Thanks for your patience (and thanks for the heads-up,Brandon Tidd) -- I've created a ticket on your behalf.
Thank you both!
How can I set up a trigger that runs only when we are NOT within scheduled hours?
I.e. I want an autoreply that runs when it's business hours and one that runs when it's not business hours
Hello AgainRebecca Katz!
In this case, you'll want to look for the condition "Within Business Hours?". If you have multiple Schedules created, you'll also want to define which schedule this Trigger should reference. Note that the Schedule is set via another Trigger when the ticket is created/updated.
Brandon
Thanks Brandon!!
I think what's confusing me is that there is also a trigger condition on the schedule itself. So I guess ignore that condition and just use these two. I'll try that thank you!
When I tried it now the trigger failed to run even though we are in business hours but I'll try it again. Thanks
Hey Brandon,
I have it set up this way and it's currently business hours but the trigger isn't running. Any ideas?
The trigger runs properly as soon as I remove those two conditions
Thanks!
Pleasesign into leave a comment.