Business hours

Defines your operating schedule. Affects SLA timers, auto-reply behavior, and routing rule conditions.

Overview

Business hours tell the system when your team is available. This configuration drives three behaviors:

Routing conditions: rules can use _is_after_hours or _is_business_hours to route signals differently outside operating hours (for example, send an after-hours template instead of creating a callback task).
SLA timers: response time SLAs pause outside business hours so your team isn't penalized for overnight messages.
Auto-reply gating: some businesses only want AI replies sent during business hours, queuing after-hours messages for morning review.

Configuration

Timezone

Select your business timezone from the dropdown. All schedule evaluations use this timezone automatically.

Supported timezones include all major US zones (Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, Alaska, Hawaii) plus London, Paris, Tokyo, and Sydney.

Weekly schedule

For each day of the week:

Open/Closed toggle: whether you operate that day
Start time: when your business opens (24-hour format)
End time: when your business closes (24-hour format)

Shortcut: Use "Copy Monday to Tue–Fri" to quickly set a standard weekday schedule.

Default schedule: Monday–Friday 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Saturday–Sunday closed.

Using business hours in routing rules

Business hours add two special conditions you can use in your routing rules:

Condition Field	Type	Description
`_is_business_hours`	boolean	`true` if the signal arrived during open hours
`_is_after_hours`	boolean	`true` if the signal arrived outside open hours

Example rules

After-hours auto-reply:

IF _is_after_hours = true
THEN send_template: after_hours_acknowledgment

Business hours callback task:

IF _is_business_hours = true AND classification.intent = missed_call
THEN create_task: callback needed

How it works

When a signal arrives, the system checks the current time against your schedule:

Signal arrives at 8:47 PM CT
  → Timezone: America/Chicago
  → Today is Tuesday
  → Schedule: Tuesday 09:00–17:00
  → 20:47 > 17:00 → _is_after_hours = true
  → Rules with _is_after_hours conditions can now match

The evaluation is timezone-aware and handles edge cases like signals arriving exactly at open/close boundaries.

AI reply awareness

When business hours are configured, AI-generated replies automatically include schedule context. No additional configuration is needed. When your business hours are set, AI replies can reference:

Weekly schedule: your open days and hours
Timezone: your configured business timezone
Current status: whether you are currently open or closed
Next opening time: when you will next be available

This means AI replies can naturally say things like "We're open Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern" or "We're currently closed but will reopen tomorrow at 9 AM" without you having to write templates for every scenario.

This context is injected into the AI system prompt automatically whenever business hours are configured. There is nothing to enable or configure beyond setting your schedule.

Tips

Always set your timezone first. A wrong timezone means all after-hours routing is wrong.
Use the Test Runner to verify after-hours behavior. The test runner evaluates business hours at the time you run the test.
SLA timers respect business hours. If you have a 1-hour SLA and a message arrives at 4:30 PM with close at 5:00 PM, the SLA clock pauses at 5:00 PM and resumes when you open the next day.

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