Question

mutiple business hours in a group

  • 4 November 2022
  • 9 replies
  • 121 views

Userlevel 2
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We have a group that consists of 20 agents and half work an early shift and the other work a late shift. How do we incorporate having the SLA follow and early and late shifts?

if I could apply two different business hours to one group, that would be ideal but I don’t think that’s possible. I can’t be the only person that has this issue. Is there a work around?


9 replies

Userlevel 3
Badge +5

Hi @mhall , 

Below is the suggestion

  1. Create two groups and tag the early shift members to one and late shift to other group.2.
  2. Based on the created time of the ticket assign the tickets to the relevant group.
  3. The created time of the ticket can be matched with business hours (early/late) in the Ticket Create automation as shown below
  4. Based on the automation action, assign to the relevant matching group.
     

 

Userlevel 2
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@vinothkumar.manoharan how do you take into account the ticket creation rules I already have in place for that group?

 

is there no a way to have multiple business hours in  one group?

Userlevel 3
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@mhall We can have only one business hour tagging to a group. However, the same can be achieved using Splitting group and assigning based on Ticket Create automation that gets the created time of the ticket and validate with the Business Hours time and then assign to the relevant group

Userlevel 2
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@vinothkumar.manoharan If a ticket is created while there is an overlap in both groups ( when they are both working) how does the system decide which group to assign the ticket to?

Userlevel 3
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@mhall If the Business hours for the group are defined properly then there will not be any overlap and even if both group are working, the assignment happens only based on the business hours tagged to the group.

Userlevel 2
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@vinothkumar.manoharan I should have mentioned, I need overlap. The shifts at 7:30AM- 4PM and 10:30 AM -7 PM, we are able to resolve the most tickets when the shifts overlap (10:30- 4PM). My concern is tickets would only go into the early shift queue until 4PM, which means my later shift would not get any new tickets from 10:30AM- 3:59PM. How does that make sense? It’s not an efficient work around. Having two sets of business hours per group would fix this issue that I’m sure many other businesses are experiencing.

Userlevel 2
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@vinothkumar.manoharan I wanted to follow up to see if you have a solution to my last comment.

 

Thank you

Userlevel 2
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@vinothkumar.manoharan Can you please provide me with a solution on this? I think it’s safe to say with anyone in a ticketing system, they are working more than one shift, so have multiple business hours inside a group should be attainable. 

Userlevel 1
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​@mhall

Hope you're doing well!

Let me understand your concern.

So, your agents work in 2 shifts - 7.30 AM to 4 PM and 10.30 AM to 7 PM.

Creating two different business hours will result in the overloading of tickets for the earlier shift guys alone.

Let me suggest you 2 workarounds, and we'll see which one will help you!

  1. Creating relevant groups

Here, I suggest you create 3 groups and map it to 3 business hours.

Group 1 - 7.30 AM to 10.30 AM ( The group contains agents only from 7.30 AM to 4 PM shift )

Group 2 - 10.30 AM to 4 PM ( The group contains agents from both 7.30 AM to 4 PM shift & 10.30 AM to 7 PM shift )

Group 3 - 4 PM to 7 PM ( The group contains agents only from 10.30 AM to 7 PM shift )

 

Now, using ticket creation automation, create a rule such that when a ticket is created during a specific business hour, it should be automatically assigned to the relevant group and can be automatically assigned among agents under group properties.

 

Let's see in brief how this works!

  • Tickets created between 7.30 AM and 10.30 AM will be assigned to agents evenly in Group 1.
  • Tickets created between 10.30 AM and 4 PM will be assigned to agents evenly in Group 2.
  • Tickets created between 4 PM and 7 PM will be assigned to agents evenly in Group 3.

 

  1. ​Using agent availability effectively

Here, I suggest you to have just 1 group with 1 business hour - 7.30 AM to 7 PM

Under Group Properties, kindly enable automatic ticket assignment and select Centrally manage the agent availabilities, so that the admin can centrally toggle on and off the availability of the agents who don’t work during a particular time so that the tickets would be evenly assigned only to active agents on the desk.

Kindly let us know if this works!

 

Regards,

Sudhan

Product Consultant - Freshdesk Omnichannel

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