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Link a team to opening hours

Assign a team its own opening-hours rule, for all its channels or one channel at a time, so SLA timers and web chat availability reflect the team's actual schedule. Most useful for multi-region teams or specialist teams with hours that differ from the workspace default.

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Link a team to opening hours

The opening-hours rule assigned to a team on a channel is what downstream features read to know “is this team open right now?” — for SLA timers, chat-widget availability, and auto-archive.

Opening hours resolve per team and channel: each team and channel pair is one cell. A cell with no assignment inherits the workspace default rule, or is always open when there is no default.

For teams whose schedule differs from the workspace default — say, a Premium team that’s 24/7 while the workspace default is 9-5 weekdays — assign the team its own rule on the Coverage tab instead of letting it inherit.

Before you start

Steps

  1. Open Settings → Opening hours.
  2. Open the Coverage tab.
  3. Find the team’s row.
  4. Pick the opening-hours rule from the dropdown in the All channels column, or in a single channel’s column.
  5. The choice saves as soon as you pick it.

The link takes effect immediately. SLA timers and other features now consult this rule when evaluating “is the team open?”

Common patterns

Multi-region teams

Each regional team links to its regional opening-hours rule:

  • EU Support — EU Hours — Mon-Fri 09:00-17:00 CET
  • APAC Support — APAC Hours — Mon-Fri 09:00-17:00 SGT
  • Americas Support — Americas Hours — Mon-Fri 09:00-17:00 ET

Each rule has its own timezone; the link makes sure each team’s downstream behavior reflects its actual operating window.

24/7 vs business-hours teams in the same workspace

  • Standard Support — Standard Hours — Mon-Fri 09:00-17:00
  • Critical Issues — 24/7 Coverage — Always open
  • On-Call — 24/7 Coverage — Always open

This is the easiest model for tenants that mix always-on critical-issue teams with normal-hours general support.

Specialist team with shorter hours

  • General Support — Standard Hours — Mon-Fri 09:00-17:00
  • Phone Specialists — Phone Hours — Mon-Fri 09:00-12:00
  • Email General — (no assignment, inherits the workspace default) — Mon-Fri 09:00-17:00

The phone team is open shorter; the email team uses the default. SLA timers and the chat widget reflect this.

Downstream features that read team opening hours:

  • SLA timers pause outside the team’s hours (unless the SLA policy has Ignore office hours on). When a conversation moves to another team — an agent or team lead reassigns it, an automation assigns it, or the AI hands it over — a running SLA timer is counted again in the new team’s hours, from the time it started. A conversation with no SLA yet gets one that starts when it is routed. A conversation with no team yet uses the workspace default hours. An SLA set by an automation’s Set SLA Policy action is not recounted.
  • Web chat widget shows availability based on the hours of the widget’s default team on web chat
  • Voice IVR — the “Is Open” node checks the opening-hours rule selected on the node itself, not the team’s rule
  • Automation rules with schedule restrictions — they use the opening-hours rules selected on the automation rule, not the team’s hours
  • Per-user availability — agents control their own status (Available / Break / On a Call / Wrap Up / Offline) independent of team hours
  • The user’s calendar — Atender doesn’t sync to external calendars
  • Tenant-wide opening hours — assignments are per team and channel; the workspace default still applies to every cell without one

Verify it worked

  1. Outside the linked rule’s hours, open a conversation that should be routed to this team.
  2. SLA timer should be paused (unless policy ignores office hours).
  3. Check the chat widget on a page that routes to this team — should show “we’re closed” or similar.

If everything’s working as expected during business hours but the after-hours behavior isn’t — the assignment probably isn’t applying. Walk through the rule-resolution reference.

Troubleshooting

  • Symptom: Assigned the rule but the team behaves like the default. Fix: On the Coverage tab, check the team’s cell for the conversation’s channel. A cell left on Inherit uses the workspace default, even when the team’s other channels have a rule.
  • Symptom: Different conversations on the same team get different opening-hours behavior. Fix: Rules are assigned per channel, so conversations on different channels of the same team can follow different rules. The team’s All channels cell shows Mixed when its channels differ; check each channel’s cell.
  • Symptom: Timezone seems wrong. Fix: Timezones are set on the opening-hours rule, not on the team. Open the rule and verify the timezone field.

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