Workflow: Set up a lunch schedule for Zendesk Chat

Create multiple schedules with operating hours to set an offline schedule that serves as a lunch break for your Chat agents. This workflow contains the below steps.

• Step 1: Add agents to a department
• Step 2: Create the schedules
• What's next

Step 1: Add agents to a department

To set up schedules, you must first add your agents to departments.

To add agents to a department

1. In your Chat dashboard, navigate to Settings > Departments and click the department you want to edit. If you didn't set up a department yet, click Add department to create a new department.
2. Add your agents to the department. If you don’t already use departments, you can add all your agents to the same one.
3. Click Save changes

Note: If you migrated to the Zendesk Agent Workspace, Chat departments are managed in Support and are called groups. For more information, see the article: Managing agent groups in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.

Step 2: Create the schedules

Create morning and afternoon schedules with a 1-hour interval allocated as your agents' lunch break.

To create the schedules

1. Go to Settings > Account and click the Operating Hours tab
2. In the upper-right corner of the page, click On
3. Go to the Department tab and click Add schedule. Name your new schedule.
4. Set the Schedule status to Enabled
5. In the Schedule type field, select Daily
6. Select the check box next to each day of the week that has operating hours. For example, check Monday to Friday if you're online on weekdays.
7. Adjust the sliders next to each day to set the hours when agents are available to chat. For example, 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM for the morning schedule.
   
8. Click Add schedule to create the afternoon schedule
9. Repeat the steps to create the afternoon schedule. Make sure that the days selected are the same. In this example, the second schedule is from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM.
   
10. Click Save changes

What's next

If you need coverage during lunch time, create two morning and two afternoon schedules that overlap, and assign different departments to each schedule.

For example, add two morning schedules from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM, and 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Then, add two afternoon schedules from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, and 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM.

For more information, see the article: Creating a schedule with operating hours.