[Legacy] Opening Hours Explained

This article covers how to trigger the Out of Hours reply when conversations take place outside of your agents' working hours.

This is a legacy solution, and has been replaced with the more dynamic and flexible solution of Operating Hours, which supports multiple business hours that can be created for a more flexible, personalized approach.

Learn about operating hours here

This article covers: 

• What is Opening Hours?
• Enabling Opening Hours
• Enabling "Use OOH Replies When Agents Are Offline"
• Out of hours Replies
  • Creating out of hours replies for an intent 
  • Creating out of hours replies for System Replies
  • Creating out of hours replies for Template Replies
  • Enabling "Use OOH Replies When Agents Are Offline"

What are Opening Hours?

Opening Hours allows you to customize your bot according to the office hours of your live agents. This does NOT affect the display of your bot widget as that is controlled via your CRM platform. When Opening Hours are turned on, customers will see the relevant Out of Hours reply if available.

When Opening Hours is on, chat visitors will get the main reply during the opening hours defined in our Dashboard, and the Out of Hours reply outside of those hours.

If you leave it off, only the main reply is used. 

Make sure there is an Out of Hours reply under all relevant intents before turning this on to avoid an error.

When creating these Out of Hours replies you can, for example, remove escalations to agents and opt for creating a ticket instead.

Enabling Opening Hours

To enable Opening Hours:

1. Login to Ultimate's Dashboard and select your bot. If you have more than one bot, make sure to select the bot you want to enable this in first
2. Go to Settings > Bot Settings > Opening Hours
3. Toggle on Use Opening Hours
4. Select the timezone your agents to operate in
5. Set your opening days and hours
6. Click Save
   
   

✅  All set! 

Now that the days and hours are defined, conversations starting outside these opening hours will trigger out-of-hours replies. You will need to create Out of Hours replies for each relevant intent. Learn how to do it here.

Enabling "Use OOH Replies When Agents Are Offline"

OOH replies are used when bots are on 24/7 but agent support is not. Enable it if you would like the Out of Hours reply to be used when your agents are offline or not available during office hours.

You can create an Out of Hours reply for any replies under your intents, as well as any of the system replies and template replies.

Note - This is a legacy solution, and has been replaced with the more dynamic and flexible solution of Operating Hours, which supports multiple business hours that can be created for a more flexible, personalized approach.

Creating out-of-hours replies for an intent

To create Out of Hours reply for an intent:

1. Login to Ultimate's Dashboard and select your bot. If you have more than one bot, make sure to select the bot you want to enable this in first
2. Go to Content > Intents
3. Hover over the intent you want to create an Out of Hours reply of
4. Click the pencil icon 
5. Click Go to Detail Page
6. Hover over the reply you want to create an Out of Hours reply of
7. Click the pencil icon of that reply
8. Click Out of Hours Reply
   
9. Enable Use this answer outside of opening hours
   • Ignore the Activation Options field
10. Click Save
11. You can now create an Out of Hours reply in either simple text form or dialogue, by toggling on Dialogue Mode
    • You can access the dialogue builder by clicking on the dialogue block that appears

Creating out-of-hours replies for System Replies

To create out of hours replies for a system reply:

1. Go to your bot
2. Under Content click System Replies
3. Hover over the system reply you want to create an out of hours reply for
4. Click the pencil icon of that system reply
5. Click Go to Detail Page
6. Click Out of Hours Reply
7. Enable Use this answer outside of opening hours
   • Ignore the Activation Options field
8. Click Save
9. You can now create a simple out of hours reply or a new dialogue, by toggling on Dialogue Mode
   • You can access the dialogue builder by clicking on the dialogue node that appears

Creating out-of-hours replies for Template Replies

To create out of hours replies for a system reply:

1. Go to your bot
2. Under Content click Template Replies
3. Hover over the system reply you want to create an Out of Hours reply of
4. Click the pencil icon of that Template reply
5. Click Go to Detail Page
6. Click Out of Hours Reply
7. Enable Use this answer outside of opening hours
   • Ignore the Activation Options field
8. Click Save
9. You can now create a simple out of hours reply or a new dialogue, by toggling on Dialogue Mode
   • You can access the dialogue builder by clicking on the dialogue node that appears

Enabling "Use OOH Replies When Agents Are Offline"

OOH replies are used when bots are on 24/7 but agent support is not. Enable it if you would like the Out of Hours reply to be used when your agents are offline or not available during office hours.

To enable Out of Hours replies when agents are offline or not available:

1. Go to your bot
2. Click on Settings
3. Under Bot Settings click on Opening Hours
4. Enable Use OOH Replies When Agents Are Offline
5. Click Save