Business hours, holidays and closures

Business hours tell Cliedesk when your team works. Open Settings → Business hours. People with Manage settings (Cliedesk Admin) can change them. At install the business hours are open 24/7, in the site time zone.

Set your business hours

1. Click Edit.
2. Enter a Name and choose a Time zone.
3. For each day, click Add hours and set the times in 15-minute steps. A day can have up to 6 ranges. A range can go past midnight, such as 22:00–02:00. Use Open 24/7 to open every day. Ranges may not overlap.
4. Copy Monday to Tuesday–Friday saves time.
5. Click Save business hours.

Times use the local clock of the time zone, so days when the clocks change are right. The setup assistant on the first start sets these hours too.

Different business hours per queue, team, channel, product or conversation are available with Cliedesk Pro (see SLA with Cliedesk Pro).

Holidays

Click Holidays.

• Load public holidays: Choose a country and a Year. Cliedesk adds the public holidays for this year and the next two, and adds new ones each week. Loading again adds only missing days.
• Add a holiday or closure: a First day and an optional Last day (up to 366 days). Choose Closed all day, or set Open from and Open until for shorter hours, such as Dec 24 09:00–13:00.

Add regional holidays by hand.

Closure mode

Use Closure when the whole team is away.

1. Set the First closed day and the Reopening day.
2. Write a Message for customers.
3. Choose the Chat widget during the closure.
4. Click Save closure.

During a closure the business hours count as closed. The widget shows your message and the reopening day. The acknowledgment email uses the closure message. Automatic messages can use {closure.message} and {closure.reopens}. Closure mode ends by itself on the reopening day.

One schedule for everything

The same business hours drive:

• the In business hours and Holiday conditions in rules,
• widget open hours and the out-of-hours text,
• agents going Offline at closing time,
• snooze times such as “tomorrow” (they start when work starts),
• the reply-by time customers see.

Change them once and all of these follow.

The reply-by time customers see

Outside your business hours, Cliedesk tells customers when you open again. The acknowledgment email, automatic messages with {conversation.reply_by} or {conversation.reply_promise} and the chat widget use the same time. While you are open, the widget shows a general text, such as “We usually reply within a few hours” (you can change it in the widget settings). With Cliedesk Pro, SLA policies give an exact reply-by time from their first reply target.