Defining Business Hours and Holidays - Online Help | Zoho Desk

Setting Business Hours and Holidays

Organizations that cater to customers from different countries or have employees operating globally from regional offices often observe multiple sets of work hours. This enables them to do business overseas and mark their presence globally with a wider outreach. These organizations mostly have customer support teams operating in different time zones and shifting to provide timely assistance to their customers. To ensure customer tickets are not left unattended, escalated, or overdue due to unavailability of support agents, it is essential to arrange work hours carefully.
Zoho Desk allows organizations to define multiple sets of business hours, which enables them to assign and address customer queries proactively. 

Availability 
Permission Required
Users with administrative privilege can set Business Hours and Holidays.
Check Availability and Limits

Creating Business Hours

Business or operational hours help to manage time-bound activities in the organization. For example, certain businesses follow SLA policies that require customer support team to resolve tickets within a stipulated time. For example, an SLA policy states that tickets must be resolved within 24 hours of submission, so the due date of the ticket will be computed based on the business hour that is set for the org.
Likewise, several automated actions, such as approvals, workflows, and blueprints, that are time-bound use business hours to calculate escalations and due dates.
In Zoho Desk, business hours can be set for a particular timezone in three ways:
  1. 24x7 (always) - For organizations that work round-the-clock, that is 24 hours a day everyday.
  2. Specific hours - Suitable for organizations that work at specific time for a select number of days in a week. For example, Monday to Friday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.
  3. Custom hours - Works for organizations that operate at different hours for the days of the week. For example, Monday 9:00 am to 2:00 pm, Tuesday 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, and so on.  
To create business hours and holidays
  1. Click the Setup icon  ) in the top bar.
  2. Under General, click Business Hours.
  3. On the Business Hours page, click Add Business Hour.
    If you have already created a business hour, click New Business Hour in the upper right area.



  4. In the New Business Hour Details section, do the following:
    • Enter a Name for the business hour. For example, New York Office or Eastern Daylight Time NY
    • Select the Time Zone from the drop-down list
    • Specify the Operational Hours, you can select either one:
      • Always 
      • Specific Working Hours
      • Custom
    • Drag the top or bottom of the time block (green bar) to customize the start or end time.
      Click the 
      Close icon ( X ) on the time block to remove hours from a day.
  5. Toggle Associate Holiday List.
  6. Create New Holiday List.
    If you have already created a holiday list, click Associate Existing Holiday List.



  7. On the holidays window, do the following:
    • Enter a Name for the holiday list.
    • Click on a date in the calendar, enter a name for the holiday and then click Add.
      You can select multiple dates as a range for adding extended holidays.
      Click on a date again to add more holidays to this list.
    • Click Save Holiday List to return to the Business Hour page.
  8. Click Save.
You can edit or delete a business hour from the Business Hours List page. Before you delete a business hour, you must dissociate the SLAs and the Time-based rules that are associated with it.

Creating Holiday List

Create a holiday schedule to add exceptions to the business hours configured in your help desk. The holidays you add will be considered as outside of business hours and the SLAs, Blueprint, and time-based rules will ignore them while setting due dates and triggering escalations. You can create holiday schedules for multiple regions or time zones which can then be associated with their respective business hours. For example, U.S. Holidays, British Holidays, and Australian Holidays.
Notes
  • You cannot create two holiday lists with the same name.
  • You cannot set a partial day as holiday for example, half day.
  • You cannot clone a holiday.

To create your holiday list
  1. Click the Setup icon  ) in the top bar.
  2. UnderGeneral  click Business Hours.
  3. Under Business Hours sub-menu click Holiday Lists .
  4. On the Holiday Lists page, click New Holiday List.



  5. On the New Holiday List page, do the following:
    • Enter a Name for the holiday list.
    • On the calendar view, click on a date to open a detailed view for that day.
      You can select multiple dates as a range for adding extended holidays.
    • Enter a Name for the holiday and then click Add.
    • Click on a date again to add more holidays to the list.
  6. Click Save.

Associating a Holiday List to Business Hour

Business hours can be associated with holiday lists to ensure tickets, SLAs or pending activities are escalated only during the operational hours that can prevent delays due to unavailability of support agents. The days that are marked as holidays will be excluded while setting due dates and triggering escalations for SLAs, Blueprint, and time-based rules. You can create holiday schedules for multiple regions or time zones for eg., US holiday list, UK holiday list,  Australia holiday list, etc. which can be associated with the respective business hours. 
Note
  1. A business hour can be associated with only one holiday list.
  2. A holiday list can be associated with more than one business hour.
To associate business hours to holidays
  1. Go to Setup > General > Business Hours > Holiday Lists.
  2. Click the Edit icon (  ) corresponding to the holiday list you want to associate with business hours.
  3. On the Edit Holiday List page, toggle Associate Business Hours.
  4. Select the business hours you want to associate from the drop-down menu.
  5. Click Save.

Behavior of SLAs with Business Hours

You can create service-level agreements that will comply with your business hours in Zoho Desk. While creating an SLA, you must enter the resolution time. Sequentially, the resolution time will set the due date for the tickets. The behavior of business hours and the logic behind setting the ticket due dates are explained with an illustration below:

Let's take, for instance, the following business hours:
Monday to Friday: 9.00 A.M. to 6.00 P.M.
Saturday: 9.00 A.M. to 1.00 P.M. &
Sunday: Holiday

Resolution Time Set in Hours
For example, you configure an SLA with the resolution time of 50 hours. In this case, a ticket coming in at 10.00 A.M. on a Monday will be due on the following Monday at 11.00 A.M. Here is how it is calculated:
Business hours remaining on Monday: 8 hours (10.00 A.M. to 06.00 P.M.)
Business Hours on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (9hours*4days): 36 hours 
Business Hours on Saturday: 4 hours (9.00 A.M. to 1.00 P.M.)
Monday: 2hours (9.00 A.M. to 11.00 A.M.)
Due on: Monday @ 11.00 A.M. at the end of 50 hours.

Resolution Time Set in Days
For instance, you configure an SLA with the resolution time of 1 day. In this case, the due date will be set based on the exact business days, and it will not consider the working hours. Please note that the business day calculation will include Saturdays (as in the illustration), though it has got only 4 working hours. 

Here are a few sample cases, when you setup the resolution time as 1 day:
Tickets created: 
  1. At 10.00 A.M. on Monday, will be due at 10.00 A.M. on Tuesday if it is not a holiday. 
  2. At 10.00 P.M. on Monday, will be due at 06.00 P.M. on Tuesday if it is not a holiday. 
  3. At 10.00 P.M. on Friday, will be due at 01.00 P.M. on Saturday if it is not a holiday.
  4. During the after hours on Saturday or Sunday, will be due at 06.00 P.M. on Monday.

Deactivating Business Hours

To deactivate a business hour
  1. Click the Setup icon  ) in the top bar.
  2. Click Business Hours under the General menu.
  3. On the Business Hours page, move your mouse pointer over the business hour you want to deactivate.
  4. Click the On toggle to Off on the business hour.
  5. Click Save.
    The business hour will be deactivated and moved to the Inactive list.



Deleting Holidays

At times, a holiday is not guaranteed the next year, or it falls on an off day. You can delete these holidays from the list. 
To delete a holiday
  1. Go to Setup > Business Hours Holiday Lists.
  2. Click the Edit icon (  ) corresponding to the holiday list you want to modify.
  3. Click on the holiday you want to delete from the calendar.


  4. Click the Delete icon  ) on the holiday window.
  5. Click Save.

Deactivating Holiday List

You can deactivate a holiday list if you need to. When you do so, the associated business hours are not suspended during any holidays with which they are affiliated.
To deactivate a holiday list
  1. Click the Setup icon (  ) in the top bar.
  2. Click Business Hours under the General menu.
  3. Click Holiday Lists under the Business Hours sub-menu.
  4. On the Holiday Lists page, move your mouse pointer over the holiday list you want to deactivate.

  5. Toggle Off the holiday list.
  6. Click Save.

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