<translate>= Configuring Hours of Operation (HOP) = Setting up hours of operation (HOP) is one of the most basic and important things to consider when configuring your contact center. After all, your customers should know when they can and can’t reach you.
In the Contact Center Administrator application, you can configure hours of operation globally (i.e., for your entire contact center), then per service, and then per scenario. Noting this, the most important thing to remember when configuring HOP is there is a hierarchy. That is, HOP are read by the system in a particular order, and every added HOP condition will supersede the previous one.
In this article, we will start with the most basic hours of operation configuration and progress through the hierarchy.
Finally, as a general reminder, don’t make things any more complicated than they need to be! Keeping track of multiple HOP conditions can be difficult, so, if a basic global configuration meets your center’s needs, stick with this.
1. Call Center Configuration > Calendar
Before configuring your HOP, you should define your days of operation, known as calendars. Beginning in section Call Center Configuration, go to section Calendar. Here, you will see a number of predefined calendars available for use. If you need to create a new calendar or edit a pre-existing one, it should be done first. The reason for this is that when you define your global HOP, you define your days of operation at the same time.
Note: Your contact center's holidays should be defined here first; once defined, they may be added to a global HOP.
2. Call Center Configuration > Hours of Operation
Continuing in section Call Center Configuration, go to section Hours of Operation. This is where you configure your contact center’s global HOP. You can configure as many different types of hours of operation as you need (e.g., weekday, weekend, holiday, etc.). Note that from the Associations tab, you can see what services and scenario entries use a specific HOP entry.
When creating an HOP condition, you will select a global Calendar first, then define the hours, and finally, select the timezone. Note that you may add as many conditions as you need to a global HOP.
As a reminder, holiday calendars may be added as a HOP condition; however, instead of defining hours of operation, you will select the closed option.
3. Services & Campaigns
After defining a global HOP condition, you will need to assign it to a service or campaign. To do this, go to section Services & Campaigns. For each service or campaign, you can set unique hours of operation; this includes email services.
When configuring HOP for a specific service, you have two options: select and specify. Option select lets you select from your globally configured HOP. Should you desire, you have the ability to customize a selected global HOP; customized HOP override your global HOP. Option specify lets you create HOP from scratch, specifically for this service. To do this, click add, then configure the days and times you would like. Note that when specify is selected, the default option is Open 24/7.
4. Scenario Entries
If you would like, you can continue to set more HOP conditions per scenario entry. This applies to all scenario entry types except email. Note that any unique HOP defined here override previous ones.
When configuring HOP for scenario entries, like in section Services & Campaigns, you have the option to select a new global set of hours or specify ones unique to this specific scenario entry. Additionally, there is the option “from service”, which takes the hours of operation from the services that are active at the moment. If you do not need any additional HOP conditions added to your scenario the from service option should be selected.
5. Scenarios
Scenarios is the final place where you may define HOP conditions; they are set using the If block. Note that when defined in a scenario, HOP conditions override all previous ones.
The most common use for invoking an HOP condition in an If block is to determine what happens to customers trying to reach your contact center outside your hours of operation.
To configure an HOP check, add an If block to the top of your scenario and create a branch. For this branch, add a condition that uses the The current date and time option. From here, you may select a global HOP, and, using the "is not" option, you are checking to see if the interaction is happening outside of the selected HOP. When configured correctly, your condition will look like this:
- The current date and time
- is not
- Selected HOP
Once the condition is configured, you may decide what to do with the interaction, such as sending a call to voicemail, starting another service, routing the call elsewhere, and so forth.
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