Schedule a rule to business hours only
A rule can run only inside your opening hours, or only outside them. Useful for after-hours auto-replies, in-hours auto-routing, and anything that needs to behave differently when the team is or isn’t around.
Before you start
- A working automation rule
- Opening Hours set up for your workspace — the rule reads from them
Steps
-
Open the rule. Go to Settings → Automation rules and open the rule.
-
Open More options. Below the rule, click More options.
-
Turn on Only during opening hours. Then set:
Opening hours — the opening hours to use
Run — Inside opening hours or Outside opening hours
When the switch is off, the rule runs each time its trigger happens. This is the default.
- Save the rule. Click Save changes. The setting is for the full rule, not for one branch — all branches in the rule share it.
You can also ask the assistant, for example “Only run this outside opening hours.”
Verify it worked
Open the Run history tab, filter to the dates you want to check, and find the rule by name in the Rule column. If you chose Outside opening hours, rows show only for times when you are closed. If you chose Inside opening hours, rows show only for times when you are open. Use the Failed filter to see runs that failed and read the failure text.
Use cases
- After-hours auto-reply. When: A customer sends a message. Only during opening hours: Outside opening hours. Then: Send email template “We’re closed — back at 9am.”
- In-hours routing. When: A new conversation starts. Only during opening hours: Inside opening hours. Then: Assign conversation to an agent or team → the live team. Add a separate after-hours rule that routes to the on-call agent.
- In-hours-only escalation. When: An SLA is about to be breached. Only during opening hours: Inside opening hours. Nobody gets a page at 3am for an SLA they cannot act on.
Notes
- The schedule check uses the workspace’s Opening Hours, including timezone and holiday rules. If they are not set up correctly, the rule runs at the wrong times — verify your opening hours first.
- Only during opening hours is not the same as the On a schedule trigger. That trigger starts a rule at set times. Only during opening hours limits a rule that another event starts. You can use both, but they do different things.
Troubleshooting
- Symptom: Rule fires outside business hours even though it’s set to inside-only. Fix: Check the timezone on your Opening Hours configuration. The most common cause is a workspace timezone mismatch between the rule and the hours definition.