Recent searches


No recent searches

Setting your schedule with business hours and holidays



image avatar

Charles Nadeau

Zendesk Documentation Team

Edited Jun 21, 2024


13

111

111 comments

I'm struggling with setting holidays. I've tried various browsers (Edge, Chrome, FireFox) and all the same. The issue is that even after clicking 'Save' the Cancel/Save buttons remain:

If I switch to another page and back to schedules, the holiday is not saved.

If I click cancel I am told I have unsaved changes:

 

Seems whatever I do the 'Save' button isn't working?

What am I doing wrong?

0


Hi there,

We are Zendesk professional subscribers and yet I don't see the "Schedules" option in Settings? Am I missing something?

0


image avatar

Blanca

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Yedudah,

Thank you for reaching out. Based on your e-mail address, your account is subscribed to the Team plan. If this is a mistake, please reach out to your Account Manager for clarification that you are supposed to be subscribed to Professional. You are correct that for a Professional subscription and above, the Business Schedule setting is available.

Cheers,

0


I have agents on different schedules but our business hours are set separately (so an agent might work 9-5 but we are open for longer than that). How can I make it so that the SLA doesn't penalize an agent for not responding when they aren't working. In other words, setting an agent's schedule which is separate from the business hours so that it's fair for all agents. Hope this makes sense, thanks!

0


image avatar

Brandon Tidd

Zendesk LuminaryUser Group LeaderThe Humblident Award - 2021Community Moderator

Hi @... -

Thanks for reaching out!  So the SLA is generally an end-user-focused metric.  That is to say, even when your agents go offline, the end-user is still waiting for an answer, so the SLA is still in danger of being violated.  The best practice here would be to have the team collaborate on tickets that are near breach.  There are other options as well, of course, such as setting the ticket to pending which would force (some) of the SLA timers to pause, but at the end of the day your customers are still waiting for an answer.  Hope this helps!

Brandon

 

0


Thanks for your quick reply, @.... I see what you mean about the SLA being customer-facing as opposed to a way of measuring agent performance. Thanks!

0


Hi.

Let's say an agent usually works Monday-Friday, 9am-6pm (let's call it Schedule1). But as of a certain date his schedule  has been extended and was changed to Monday-Saturday, 9am-6pm (let's call it Schedule2). And when this new Schedule2 kicked in this agent still had some older tickets open. So these older tickets started out being marked with Schedule1 for a few days but in the middle of their life cycle the agent's schedule changed to Schedule2 and that was reflected on those tickets.

So the questions are:

How will Zendesk calculate all the usual KPIs (full resolution, initial reply, etc)? Solely based on Schedule1? Solely based on Schedule2? Or will it calculate using both depending on the date of the marking of the ticket with each schedule?

 

We usually have a lot of schedule changes due to campaigns so I'd like to know what Zendesk's expected behavior is in these situations.

Thank you.

 

0


image avatar

Brandon Tidd

Zendesk LuminaryUser Group LeaderThe Humblident Award - 2021Community Moderator

Hi Carlos Santos -

If you have one business schedule, it will automatically be applied to every ticket.  When you have multiple business schedules defined, you have the flexibility to specify which business schedule is applied to which ticket and when via Triggers.  So, in theory, you could setup a Trigger that says: If Ticket is Updated and Assignee is changed to Agent, Set Schedule to X.

That being said, we traditionally see schedules aligning more to the business hours of operation vs. any one agent (ie, we're open Mon-Sat 9A-6P).  That way, your SLAs around business hours are tied to your actual business hours and not any one agent's schedule.

At the end of the day, we tend to think of SLA's from the customer's perspective vs the agent.  If you're looking for more of a WFM tool, I would suggest looking at layering TymeShift on top.

Hope this helps!

Brandon Tidd
729 Solutions

2


Hi,

May I know what's different between "Ticket: Schedule" and "Ticket: Within schedule" conditions at "Creating triggers based on multiple schedule"?

Use example in this article

If condition is

Ticket: Schedule | Is | Americas support hours
I think trigger will filter the tickets apply to "Americas support hours" schedule.
then, what's different with condition?

Ticket:Within schedule | Americas support hours 
Is this condition filter the different tickets? If true, what kind of tickets it filter?

0


image avatar

Brandon Tidd

Zendesk LuminaryUser Group LeaderThe Humblident Award - 2021Community Moderator

Hi john_weng 翁維澤,

Happy to help here.  The first example does identify tickets that have the Americas Support Hours schedule.  The second example allows you to compare the ticket update time to any schedule, not just the schedule applied to the ticket. So while choosing Amercas support hours for both should yield the same tickets, you could get a bit more nuanced with Tickets Within Schedule.  For example, you could set Shift A to be from 8A-12P and Shift B to 12P-5P and then take a certain action on tickets (add a tag, route to a group, etc).  If the ticket was created or updated within a specific shift schedule, without having to worry about breaking your SLAs which would most likely be based on your "Americas Support Hours" schedule.

Hope this helps!

Brandon Tidd

0


single day means  (same start and end date) 11/26 the whole 24 hrs. (11/26 - 12: 00am 11/26 - 11:59 PM ) even its says expired before the day ends- is it correct?

0


image avatar

Brandon Tidd

Zendesk LuminaryUser Group LeaderThe Humblident Award - 2021Community Moderator

Hi Anita Rajkumar -

That is correct.  The checkbox will fire at the beginning of the time off but it is valid for the full day.

Brandon

0


Hi, 

Is the ability to schedule holidays only available to the account owner, or is there a way to transfer this to administrators?

Thank you

0


image avatar

Brandon Tidd

Zendesk LuminaryUser Group LeaderThe Humblident Award - 2021Community Moderator

Sam Evans

Anybody with the role of Administrator should be able to adjust schedules & holiday settings out of the box.  If you are not seeing this on your end, I would suggest you use the in-product "get help" feature to connect with a member of our advocacy team.  Thanks!

Brandon

0


Should I delete holidays that have passed?  Will this affect any metrics?

0


I don't think there's any reason you'd need to delete holidays that have passed. And deleting past holidays could affect business-hours metrics for tickets that have been open since before that holiday -- for example, if you had set January 1 2022 as a holiday, and now delete it because it's in the past, then if you have a ticket opened last year that's solved tomorrow, that ticket's "Full resolution - business hours" will treat Jan 1 as a business day. 

0


Hi Dave and thanks for the reply.  Your response makes complete sense and I can definitely see the danger in deleting a holiday as recent as that.  I was thinking more about holidays from years past; such as all of the 2020 holidays that have long since passed and I cannot see any reason these would affect any tickets of any status.

0


Glad to help! Yeah, I don't think it should create problems as long as all the tickets from that era are closed, but on the other hand, I don't think there'd be a particular need to delete those old holidays.

0


Well, after a few years, I can imagine a looooong list of old past holidays that I have to scroll past to get to the bottom of the list.  

0


Needs Correction:

 

The link under 'Admin Center' in the following para is incorrect:

 

To set your schedule

  1. In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Schedules.

0


image avatar

Brett Bowser

Zendesk Community Manager

Thanks for bringing this to our attention Sonny! I'll share this with our documentation team so they can get this link updated.
 
Cheers!

0


Is there a setting to enable Schedule settings for custom roles outside of Administrator?

1


On some holidays we will work reduced hours (e.g. only 9-5 instead of 7-7). Is there a way to set this up? Right now, looks like we either have to flag it as a holiday or be penalised for the hours outside of that day's schedule.

Thanks!

0


image avatar

Hervin

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Josh and Fiona! I'll respond to your comments individually.
 
Josh, unfortunately there is no Schedule permission available for custom roles outside of the Admin role. We have documentation that goes over what permissions agents with custom roles can have and that setting is not listed. More info can be found here: Creating custom agent roles
 
Fiona, I apologize for this limitation but currently there is no way to set a holiday for modified business hours. The only option available with holidays is to set a certain day as closed. One option you have is to note ahead of time what days you will have reduced hours and modify the weekly schedule ahead of time (day or so before.) I know this is not ideal but is one way to preserve your metrics and business hours with little interruption.

0


Hi all

How many schedules are supported in Zendesk (Enterprise)?

0


image avatar

Brandon Tidd

Zendesk LuminaryUser Group LeaderThe Humblident Award - 2021Community Moderator

Hi Chad Susa (Gravity CX - Zendesk Partner)

On Enterprise you can create as many schedules as you need.  Note, however, that Zendesk thinks about schedules from the customer's perspective vs. the agent experience. For instance, you might have a division that operates in the US and another division in the UK that need two different schedules. In other words, you wouldn't have a unique schedule for each employee, and there's a bit of a glass ceiling on how many different time zones your company can operate in.  That being said, I've never seen an upper limit on the number of schedules.  Hope this helps!

Brandon

1


Is there a way we can set the Holidays to be recurring every year? For example, 1st January will be a Holiday every year. Right now I have a yearly reminder to update this, but would make sense if I can automate some of these.

1


image avatar

Dane

Zendesk Engineering

@Jeremy,
 
As of the moment, recurring holiday is not yet a supported feature. I'd recommend creating a Community post separately for that with your use case to help get more visibility and votes on the idea. Then, others can share their use cases to further drive demand for that feature. In addition, there's also some third party apps available in the marketplace with the same functionality.

0


Hi all,

I would like to do a certain action on a group of tickets (using a specific form) , on Saturday. Meaning all the tickets i recieve on this form (from monday to Friday) , do some action on saturday. how can i achieve this? Thank you

0


We have schedules set up in ZD but still have to manually open and close our phone lines... is there a way to automatically have the 'our office is closed' messaging turned on in IVR according to this schedule? Thanks. Derek

2


Please sign in to leave a comment.