Business Hours and Holidays

CIC supports using Business Hours and Holidays as part of SLA defintions. They provide the following benefits:

• Adjusting SLA timers to allow for Business Hours only: SLAs can now be defined to count only the hours within the defined business hours on business days. If a document is received outside of business hours, the SLA timer starts at the beginning of the next business day.  For documents received close to the end of business hours where the remaining time in the day is less than the SLA duration, the system pauses the timer and resumes it at the start of the next business day.

• Adjusting SLA to allow for Business Days only: SLAs can now be defined to consider business days (i.e., excluding weekends) and defined holidays when calculating due dates. Due dates that would otherwise fall on weekend or holidays are moved to the next applicable business day. 

• Excluding Holidays in Expected Volume SLAs: SLAs can now consider holidays when making Expected Volume calculations. 

This article describes how to configure Business Hours and Holidays, making them available for defining SLAs in RADAR.

Timezones

You can set a timezone on the Settings page that applies to both Business Hours and Holidays. For example, if you select a timezone of US Pacific and specify business hours of 9 AM to 5 PM, your SLAs will be configured in terms of 9 AM to 5 PM Pacific Time.

Business Hours

Business Hours refers to the combination of days and hours when you are available to serve clients and customers and conduct operations, for example, Monday through Friday from 9 AM to 5 PM.  By default, there are no Business Hours defined.

To define Business Hours:

1. Go to Admin > Settings > Business Hours.

   

2. Toggle days on or off as required.
3. Choose start and end times for each day. Alternatively, select All Day for 24-hour coverage for that day.
4. Select a timezone. The timezone is the basis for your Business Hours. See About Timezones below for more information about how timezones are treated in CIC.
5. Click Save to save your updated list of Business Hours.

Holidays

Holidays refers to days when you have limited or no availability, for example, New Year's Day.  By default, there are no Holidays defined.  

To add a holiday:

1. Go to Admin > Settings > Holidays and select the year to which you want to add the Holiday and click the Add button.

   

2. The Add Holiday dialog box displays. Specify a name, start date, and end date.

   

3. Click OK. Your new Holiday is saved and the Edit dialog box is dismissed.
4. Click Save to save your updated list of Holidays.

To edit a Holiday:

1. Click the name of a Holiday to open it in edit mode.

   

2. Edit the Holiday definition and click OK to save your edits and exit the Edit dialog box.
3. Click Save to save your updated list of Holidays.

Use Case Examples

The following examples assume business days are Monday through Friday and business hours are 8 AM to 5 PM.

Respond within 2 business days

This example considers only business days. For example, if an order is received on Friday at 2 PM, respond by Tuesday at 2 PM.

Respond within 24 hours on business days

This example considers business days, but not business hours. If an order is received at 8 AM Monday, respond before 8 AM Tuesday.

Respond within 24 hours during business hours

This example considers both business days and business hours. If an order is received at 8 AM Monday, respond before 2 PM Wednesday. Only hours that fall within defined business hours are counted.