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Set Business Hours
Specify the hours when your support team is available to serve customers. This helps make your department’s processes, such as escalations and milestones, more accurate.
Required Editions
| View supported editions. |
| User Permissions Needed | |
|---|---|
| To set business hours: | Manage Business Hours Holidays |
Setting business hours lets you apply specific time zones and locations to:
- Milestones in entitlement processes
- Entitlement processes
- Cases
- Case escalation rules
You can also make the Business Hours field available on the Case Layout page so that your service reps can set the times a support team is available to work on the case. By default, business hours are set 24 hours, seven days a week in the default time zone specified in your organization's profile.
Additionally, users with the “Customize Application” permission can add business hours to escalation rules so that when the details of a case match the criteria of an escalation rule, the case is automatically updated and escalated with the times and location on the rule. For example, a case updated with Los Angeles business hours escalates only when a support team in Los Angeles is available.
To set business hours:
- From Setup, enter Business Hours in the Quick Find box, then select Business Hours.
- Click New Business Hours.
-
Type a name for the business hours.
We recommend using a name that will remind users of a location or time zone when they view business hours on a case, entitlement process, or milestone. For example, if your business hours are for a support center in San Francisco, you could use the name San Francisco Business Hours.
- Click Active to allow users to associate the business hours with cases, escalation rules, milestones, and entitlement processes.
-
Optionally, click Use these business hours as
the default to set the business hours as the default business
hours on all new cases.
Default business hours on cases can be updated with business hours on escalation rules if the cases match escalation rule criteria and the rule is set to override business hours.
- Choose a time zone to associate with the business hours in the Time Zone drop-down list.
-
Set your business hours for each day of the week.
- If your support team is available during the entire day every day of the week, select the 24 hours checkbox.
- Choose the start and end times for the business hours. If the time you want isn’t available, click the field and type it in.
- Leave the business hours start and end times blank and the 24 hours checkbox deselected to indicate that the support team is not available at all that day.
- Click Save.
After you have set business hours, you can associate them with:
- Escalation rules, so that when the details of a case match the criteria of an escalation rule, the case is updated and escalated with the business hours on the rule.
- Holidays, so that business hours and any escalation rules associated with business hours are suspended during the dates and times specified in holidays.
- Milestones, in entitlement processes so that business hours can change with the severity of a case.
- Entitlement processes, so that you can use the same entitlement process for cases with different business hours.
- Guidelines for Setting Business Hours
To make your support processes more accurate, define when your support team is available to help customers. There are a few guidelines to keep in mind as you set business hours.
