Product Working hours
The clock the rest of the inbox runs on.
Set each teammate’s hours once, in their own time zone. Assignment skips whoever is off, and nobody gets paged for a message that arrived while they were asleep.
- 1Each teammate’s week, in their own time zone
- 2Round-robin skips whoever is off shift
- 3The SLA ladder stops while nobody is on
- 4Overnight alerts wait for the morning
Why it exists
A rota the software does not know about is not a rota
Chats get handed to whoever is next in the list, including the person who finished at six or has not started yet. The message sits with an owner who is not there, which looks handled and is not — and meanwhile their phone is buzzing on a bedside table.
Once hours are a thing the system knows, two problems solve themselves at once: work stops going to people who cannot do it, and alerts stop arriving when nobody asked to be reachable.
What you get
In the product today.
Hours per person, in their time zone
Each teammate has their own week and their own time zone, so a team split across the Gulf and Europe does not need everyone on one clock.
Round-robin skips whoever is off
Automatic assignment picks from the people who are both online and on shift. Nobody inherits a conversation they cannot answer for another eleven hours.
Alerts wait for the morning
Email and push follow the same hours: an overnight message holds until the next window rather than interrupting. The in-app bell still records it, so nothing is lost.
A schedule that could never match is refused
Ask for 22:00 to 06:00 and the app says so, and tells you a night shift is two periods — one to midnight, one from it. Silently making somebody unassignable is the failure nobody notices for a month.
No hours set means always available
The right default, because the alternative is a teammate who quietly receives nothing and no error anywhere explains why.
When you would use it
Situations this is for
- A night shift that should be paged, and a day shift that should not.
- A team across two time zones sharing one number.
- A weekend rota where Friday and Saturday are the quiet days.
- Making sure the person on leave stops receiving new chats.
Questions
Working hours — questions
Does assignment skip agents who are off shift?
Yes. Round-robin only considers people who are online and inside their hours.
Does it hold alerts overnight?
Yes, on email and push, for anyone who has quiet hours switched on. The bell still records everything, so you can see in the morning exactly what happened overnight.
Does it stop the SLA clock paging people overnight?
Yes. The first-response ladder — nudge the agent, then their manager — does not run while nobody is on shift. A customer waiting through the night is not somebody failing to answer, and paging a manager at 3am about it is how a team switches alerts off for good.
Is it per person or one setting for the workspace?
Per person, including the time zone. There is no single workspace clock to disagree with.
What if somebody has no hours set?
They are always available — which is the right default, because the alternative is a teammate who silently receives nothing.
How do I set a shift that crosses midnight?
As two periods: one ending at 24:00 on the day it starts, and one beginning at 00:00 the next. The app will tell you this if you try to write it as one.
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