Set up your team’s opening hours

Build a working opening-hours rule. By the end you’ll have a Standard Support schedule covering email and chat, weekdays 9am-5pm in your team’s timezone.

Before you start

• Admin permissions on Opening Hours
• Teams configured (Settings → Teams) if you’ll assign hours by team
• Channels enabled (Settings → Channels)

Steps

1. Open Settings → Opening hours. The Rules tab opens first.
2. Click Add rule.
3. Name — descriptive (e.g. Standard Support Hours). This is what shows up in the rules list.
4. Set the weekly schedule:
   Click Add Weekdays. It adds Monday-Friday rows set to 09:00 to 17:00; type over the start and end time fields to change them.
   Saturday and Sunday: don’t add them (closed). A day with no row is closed.
   You can enter any valid HH:MM time, such as 09:00, 12:45, or 17:05. Loosely typed times are normalized when the field loses focus or you press Enter.
   Don’t leave the weekly schedule blank to mean “always open.” A rule with no weekly schedule and no holiday/date configuration expresses no intent, so Atender keeps the existing default/open fallback. But a rule with holiday country or date overrides and no weekly open slots means “closed except explicitly opened,” so it evaluates as closed. For 24/7 coverage, use the Always open assignment instead.
5. Confirm the timezone. Atender auto-detects from your browser, but verify it matches your team’s primary timezone. Use a timezone picker that’s unambiguous (America/New_York, not EST — EST doesn’t observe DST).
6. Click Create.
7. Assign the rule on the Coverage tab. Each row is a team and each column is a channel. In the team’s row, pick the rule in the Email and Web chat columns, or in All channels to set every channel at once. The choice saves as soon as you pick it.
   If the workspace has no default rule yet, the new rule becomes the default. The default isn’t listed in the cell dropdowns; every cell left on Inherit uses it, so you don’t need to assign it cell by cell.

The rule applies as soon as it is assigned, or straight away to every Inherit cell if it is the workspace default. SLA timers and the web chat widget start using it on the next conversation in a team and channel cell that uses it. Automation schedule restrictions and the IVR Is Open node use the rules selected on the automation or node itself.

Verify it worked

1. During configured business hours, open a conversation whose team and channel cell uses the rule. SLA timers should show countdown values that include now.
2. Outside business hours (or temporarily change the rule to a window that’s “now”), the SLA timers should pause — the badge stays at its last value rather than ticking down.
3. If you have an automation with a schedule restriction = inside business hours, run a test that should fire — it should fire only when the rule says you’re open.

Common patterns

• Standard 9-5 weekdays — Mon-Fri: 09:00-17:00, Sat/Sun off
• Extended weekday hours — Mon-Fri: 08:00-20:00
• Six-day support — Mon-Fri: 09:00-17:00, Sat: 10:00-14:00, Sun off
• Always-on async (email) — Use the Always open assignment
• Split-shift Mediterranean lunch — Mon-Fri: 09:00-13:00 + 14:00-18:00 (see split shifts)

Naming conventions for multiple rules

Once you have 3+ rules, naming consistency matters:

• <Team> <Channel> Hours — Premium Email Hours, Standard Chat Hours
• <Team> <Schedule> — Standard Weekday Support, On-Call 24/7
• <Region> <Hours> — EU Business Hours, APAC Business Hours

Be specific. A rule called Default is hard to debug six months later.

Don’t forget the timezone

The timezone applies to all time slots in the rule. If you have agents in two timezones (NYC and London), you need two rules, not one — see multi-timezone hours. Trying to encode “9am everywhere” in a single rule with one timezone produces wrong behavior for one of the offices.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: Rule doesn’t seem to apply — SLA timers count overnight. Fix: On the Coverage tab, check the cell for the conversation’s team and channel. A cell left on Inherit uses the workspace default rule, or is always open when there is none. See rule resolution reference.
• Symptom: Timezone is wrong (timer pauses at the wrong time of day). Fix: Re-check the timezone field. Use a fully-qualified zone like America/Los_Angeles rather than PST.
• Symptom: Holidays aren’t being recognized. Fix: That’s a separate setting. See Configure holidays and date overrides.

See also

• Configure holidays and date overrides
• Set up split shifts and multi-timezone hours
• Rule resolution reference