🛠️ How-to guide · Last updated: September 17, 2026

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WHAT IT DOES

Office hours tell your agents when the people behind them are actually available. An agent only offers a live-agent handoff or a phone (IVR) transfer while the linked schedule is open. When it's closed, the agent says when the team is next available and keeps helping — instead of quietly queuing someone nobody will answer. Set them up at Resources → Office hours.

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Before you start

• Office hours appear when your workspace has the Live Agent or IVR & SMS add-on — the two things they gate. With neither, there's nothing to schedule.
• A role that can edit agents — Editor, Publisher, or Admin (see Roles & Permissions).

Create a schedule

Open Resources → Office hours and select New schedule. A schedule has four tabs:

• Details — a Name (for example 311 Contact Center), an optional Description, the Time zone every time is read in (it handles daylight-saving changes for you), and What the agent says when closed — optional wording that replaces the default whenever the schedule is closed.
• Weekly hours — set opening windows for each day. Add a second window for a split shift (like a lunch closure); a window that runs past midnight is marked next day. Use Copy Monday to Tue–Fri to fill the week quickly.
• Holidays — pick a public holiday preset for your country and the dates recalculate every year, so moveable holidays stay correct. Untick any your team still works, and add your own custom holidays (same date each year, a weekday each year — like "the Friday after the 4th Thursday of November" — or a one-off date).
• Preview — see the next two weeks exactly as the agent will read them, Open or Closed, day by day.

Turn on Apply these hours and Save. With it off, agents ignore the schedule and can escalate at any time.

The schedule editor — set weekly opening windows per day (add a second window for a split shift like a lunch closure), plus a time zone, holidays, and what the agent says when you're closed. Turn off 'Apply these hours' to let agents escalate at any time.

Point an agent at a schedule

A schedule does nothing until an agent uses it. On an agent's Advanced page, both the live-agent handoff and the phone (Transfer) action have an Office hours dropdown — choose Always available (never restricted) or one of your schedules by name. One schedule can gate many agents, and the Office hours list shows Used by which agents, so you can see what each one affects.

Chat and phone can keep different hours — leave chat on Always available while the phone transfer only offers a human Mon–Fri 8–6, or point each at its own schedule.

Resources → Office hours: each schedule shows whether it's open now or when it reopens, and which agents it's Used by. Start one with New schedule.

What customers hear when you're closed

When the schedule is open, handoff and transfer work as normal. When it's closed:

• The agent doesn't hand off. It tells the customer why (outside hours, a holiday, or a one-off closure) and when the team reopens — always in the schedule's own time zone — then offers to keep helping in the meantime.