Chances are that most smaller businesses won't be able to answer support tickets at all hours of the day. Some will have support teams who work shifts or if you have multiple internal departments using Issuebear then perhaps they all have different working patterns or certain times of the day when they are able to answer tickets.
For this reason you can create Working Hours, and this will let your customers know when they are creating a new Ticket whether your helpdesk is currently being manned or not.
First to set up your Working Hours you need to add in your Date Rules, this is essential for you to make up any Working Hours within your system.
Adding in a Date Rule
Adding a new Date Rule is easy, simply complete the form capturing the details like when this Date Rule applies, how often is repeats and whether this Rule will be for Business (when you answer tickets) or Holiday (when your Agents don't answer tickets).
Name: Adding a name to the Date Rule should be straight forward eg Business Hours, Sales Team Hours, Level 2 Support Team Nightshift Hours etc.
Type: The type of rule will either be a Business rule or a Holiday rule ie whether this rule is for general Business Hours or Holiday rules.
Repeats - If your Date Rules applies for more than one day at a time then you can use the Repeats functionality. You can choose to Repeat it using the following options:
* Once
* Daily
* Weekly
* Monthly
* Yearly
Selecting Daily will then provide an 'Until' field where you can input the date that your rule will end. This can be left blank if you wish this to recur indefinitely.
Selecting Weekly will add another dropdown for you to choose from which day of the week that the rule repeats on. The form will allow you to choose any day of the week or only on Weekdays or only on Weekends.
Selecting Monthly will change the last dropdown to choose the day of the Month selector. The options for these are:
* Day/Date Entered
* First
* Second
* Third
* Fourth
* Fifth
* Last
These all relate to the type of Repeat for example choosing on the First day of the month means the rule will repeat on the First day of the month. Choosing on the Third will force you to choose a day of the week above for example Monday, and then this new Rule will apply to the Third Monday of the month. Choosing the first option of Day/Date Entered will simply run the Repeat on the same day entered above in the form and will choose this date every month going forward.
The last Repeat is Yearly. The same functionality above for Monthly Repeats will apply to Yearly Repeats ie First, Second Monday etc however you will then choose a Month that this will apply to.
Starts On - Choose the date that this rule should apply from, assuming the first rule you set up is your standard working hours which will most likely be created during the system set up process then today's date will be added here. If you are creating a Rule to cover a Bank Holiday weekend this start date will be the start date that would apply for the first day of the Holiday.
Until - This is the date the schedule should turn off, if you don't want this to end simply leave this blank.
All Day - If your new Date Rule applies to the full day and has no start or end time then you can simple toggle the All Day button to activate. This will automatically remove the Time Starts and Time Ends fields.
Time Starts - What time does your new Date Rule start, you can input this here. Depending on what Timezone was selected when your System Owner set up your instance you'll either have a 12 or 24 hour clock here to choose your start time.
Time Ends - The Time Ends should be the time you want your Date Rule to end. As before this will be based on either 12 or 24 hour clock depending on the way your system is set up. By clicking on the Add date Rule this will create your new Rule and then you can go ahead and set up any schedules.