Engage Voice
Setting up daily inbound queue business hours
Last updated on June 30, 2021
When you create an inbound queue to manage your contact center’s incoming call flow, you will also need to create business hours that lets the system know the time frames during which the inbound queue should be open — that is, when agents will be allowed to receive calls on that inbound queue.
Business hours are arranged in the system by day (Sunday through Saturday) and according to time periods within that day. Each ‘open period’ represents a chunk of time in a day during which the inbound queue will be open. Any time period that falls outside of the open period will automatically be treated as a closed period, and agents will not be able to receive calls during those closed time periods.
You can designate an entire day of the week as a closed day, and you can also break up a day into multiple open and closed periods — as many as you like.
The changes you make to your business hours will repeat every week.
Configuring inbound daily business hours
- Navigate to Routing > Queues via the left-hand navigation bar.
- Select the queue you’d like to configure your business hours in.
- Navigate to the Business Hours option in your queue’s configuration panel.
- Click the Edit pencil and paper icon located at the far right in the Daily Business Hours table to open the Edit Business Hours window.
- Find the day of the week you wish to edit.
- Check the Closed checkbox if you wish to close the business hours for that entire day.
- Choose the beginning of the open time period via the Start Period field.
- Choose the end of the open time period via the End Period field.
- To add another open period to a day, click the Add new period plus icon (located beneath the start and end open period settings).
- Repeat steps 4-9 as needed for the remaining days of the week.
- Click Ok to save your changes and exit the window.
Configuring inbound business hour overrides
Use the Business Hours Overrides section to adjust for specific days when your business hours will need to be modified or closed, like on holidays when you might be closed or have different operating hours. These business hours override the daily business hours that you have configured for your inbound queue’s open and closed hours.
- Navigate to Routing > Queues via the left nav bar.
- Select the queue you’d like to configure your schedule in.
- Select the Business Hours tab from your queue’s configuration panel.
- In the Business Hours Overrides section, click the New Override button at far right to open the Edit Business Hours window.
- Choose the Date you wish to override.
- Include a Description of the business hours override.
- To configure how you would like to handle incoming calls outside of the operating hours for the specified date, select the pencil and paper icon at far right of the Closed field to open the Closed Event Configuration window.
- Configure the desired close event settings. These settings are identical to the ones you’ll find in the Queue Events configuration page, so to learn more, visit Configuring inbound queue event settings.
- Click Ok to return to the Edit Business Hours window.
- To specify the operating hours for the specified date, select the Add new period text beneath the Closed field.
- Choose the beginning of the open time period for the specified date via the Start Period field.
- Choose the end of the open time period for the specified date via the End Period field.
- Click Ok to close the Edit Business Hours window. You will see your new override in the Business Hours Overrides section.
- Repeat steps 4-13 as needed to create additional business hours overrides.
- Don’t forget to save your changes when you’ve finished configuring your business hours overrides.
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