Setting your working hours

Nobody enjoys waking up at midnight to find ten new conversations assigned to them. Your working hours let you tell the panel "these are the hours I work"; outside them, automatic assignment skips you and the work goes to whoever is on shift. This guide covers setting up your schedule, what it affects and what it does not.

💡 This setting belongs to you: every team member enters their own schedule. The portfolio owner and its admins can also edit a member's schedule on their behalf, but the normal arrangement is that everyone writes their own shift.

Setting up your schedule

1. Click your own name at the bottom left to enter the My account area.
2. Click Profile.
3. Under the Profile section, the page holds one section for every portfolio you are a member of: My working hours · (portfolio name). Click the relevant heading to open it.
4. Tick the Use my working hours checkbox. While it is off, the schedule is never applied.
5. All seven days from Monday to Sunday are listed. Click Add range on the row of a day you work. A range starting at 09:00–18:00 drops into the row.
6. Change the From and To times to match your shift.
7. If you take a break in the middle of the day, click Add range again. You can enter up to three ranges per day.
8. Add no range at all to the days you do not work; that row reads Closed.
9. Click Save.

You can delete a range you added by mistake with the cross button at the end of it (Remove range).

⚠️ Note: If Use my working hours is ticked and you enter no range on any day, you count as closed every day and no new chat is ever assigned to you. If you switch the schedule on, make sure at least one day has a range.

What this schedule affects

Your schedule has exactly one job: deciding whether you are a candidate for automatic assignment. When the portfolio's assignment rule looks for an owner for a new conversation, it skips you if you are currently outside your own hours and moves on to the next available person. For the whole rule, see Chat assignment rules.

What this schedule does not affect

Because it is easy to confuse, let us be explicit. Your working hours do not:

• Stop you signing in. Outside your hours you can still sign in, read conversations and write replies.
• Stop manual assignment. An admin can assign you a conversation outside your hours.
• Take back conversations already assigned to you. When your shift ends, what you hold stays yours.
• Say anything to the customer. The "we are closed right now" message comes from the account's business hours, not from your schedule.
• Turn off your notifications. Notification preferences are a separate setting.

A separate schedule per portfolio

If you are in the team of more than one portfolio, you see one section per portfolio and can enter different hours in each. That is necessary: you might work weekday mornings for one business and only Saturdays for another.

The portfolio name in the section heading tells you which schedule you are editing. If the portfolio has no name, the heading shows its unnamed form.

How the time zone is calculated

The times are read in the account's time zone, not your device's clock. Even if you are in another city or country, entering 09:00–18:00 means 09:00–18:00 in the account's time zone.

Shifts that cross midnight are supported: enter 22:00–02:00 and the schedule covers the hours after midnight too; you do not need to add a separate range on the next day.

Your schedule has no holiday list. Public holidays and closed days are managed by the account's own Settings › Business hours screen; on those days the account counts as closed, so no assignment happens anyway.

How it differs from the account's business hours

There are two separate schedules, and their similar names cause constant confusion:

• My working hours (My account › Profile) — Belongs to you. It only decides whether you are a candidate for automatic assignment.
• Business hours (the account's Settings section) — Belongs to the business. It feeds the open/closed state in the inbox, the out-of-hours auto reply, deferring automations and the "do not assign outside hours" option.

The two work together: while the account is closed and do not assign outside hours is on, nobody is assigned at all; and while the account is open, only members currently inside their own hours are candidates.

A concrete example

Two people handle a bakery's inbox. One works weekdays 09:00–17:00, the other weekends 10:00–20:00.

• The weekday person adds a 09:00–17:00 range to every day from Monday to Friday and leaves Saturday and Sunday Closed.
• The weekend person adds 10:00–20:00 only to the Saturday and Sunday rows.
• Both tick Use my working hours and press Save.

Because the portfolio's rule is Share evenly, a message arriving on Saturday morning does not go to the weekday person even when their load is empty; it lands with whoever is on the weekend shift.

Common mistakes

• Forgetting to tick the box. Enter ranges without ticking Use my working hours and you count as always available — the schedule never runs.
• Ticking the box and entering no range. The opposite happens: no chat is ever assigned to you.
• Using the schedule for a day off. For a one-off closure, the holiday list lives in the account's settings.
• Expecting conversations to leave when your shift ends. An assigned conversation stays with you; handing it over needs a manual assignment.
• Editing the wrong portfolio's section. Read the portfolio name in the section heading.

If you set up your schedule and chats keep arriving outside your hours, check that the portfolio's assignment rule is not set to Always the same person with you selected; that rule respects working hours too, but when nobody else is a candidate the chat simply stays unassigned. If it persists, contact our Support team.

Related articles

• Chat assignment rules
• Assigning a conversation to an agent
• Roles and permissions
• The Team screen
• Where settings live