The opening hours of your service can be defined and handled in several ways:
- When you create a Call queue, you can define the pattern of its opening hours, choosing the dates and times you are normally open, and using a calendar you can define exceptions for public holidays.
- When you create a flow you can use the Timing applet to set a regular pattern of opening hours for a normal week. When a public holiday occurs, you will need to manually edit the settings in the Timing applet to manage it. Use this to direct calls or messages differently depending whether they arrive during your opening hours or not.
- Alternatively, you can combine the two methods. When creating a flow you can use the Timing applet to adopt the opening hours of a Call queue. Because the Timing applet can be used in call and message flows, you can use this method to apply opening hours from a call queue to a message flow.
This third method is extremely useful if you have multiple queues which all have the same opening hours. It means you only need to set (and maintain) the opening hours in one call queue, then use the Timing applet to apply those opening hours to all queues.
- To use the Timing applet, you will need to have access to advanced flows, available from the LeadApp store.
- For more general information about creating and navigating flows, see the support article Creating inbound flows.
Setting opening hours of a call queue
See the support article Defining a call queue's opening hours.
Using the Timing applet to set opening hours
As part of a flow:
- Add the Timing applet.
- Select the Set open hours option.
- Click the Timezone drop-down list and select the appropriate time zone.
- Click the + symbol to define opening hours for the first day of the week you are open.
- Complete the opening times for that day.
- Repeat for all other days you are open.
- Continue the flow by dragging an applet to the Open applet to determine what to do if the call or message arrives during opening hours.
- Drag an applet to the Closed applet to determine what to do if the call or message arrives outside your opening hours.
Managing public holidays - applet only
If you are relying on the applet only to manage your opening hours, you will need to edit your flow if a public holiday falls within the next week:
- When a public holiday falls within the next week, click the
icon for the day you will be closed. The queue will then remain closed on that day.
- Once the holiday is passed, go back to the flow and click the
next to the day to reopen it for the next week.
Using the Timing applet to take opening hours from a queue
In this method you can use the opening hours defined for any of your call queues and apply those opening hours, including any exceptions to both call and message queues.
If you later update the opening hours in the call queue, the changes will be followed by all Timing applets which take opening hours from that call queue.
Define the opening hours of a queue
See the support article Defining a call queue's opening hours for full details. In summary:
- Define your normal opening hours for one day.
- Select the Recurrence of those opening hours.
- For public holidays or any other date you might be closed as an exception, delete the particular occurrence.
- Save the changes to your queue.
Use the Timing applet
As part of a flow:
- Add the Timing applet.
- Select the Use open hours from a call queue option.
- Click the Queue drop-down list and select the call queue whose opening hours you wish to use.
- Click the Timezone drop-down list and select the appropriate time zone. Note that this setting supersedes the setting for the queue's time zone.
- Continue the flow by dragging an applet to the Open applet to determine what to do if the call or message arrives during opening hours.
- Drag an applet to the Closed applet to determine what to do if the call or message arrives outside your opening hours.
Managing the opening hours for multiple queues with Timing