Opening Hours are defined to reroute calls within your Workflows according to the hours / time zone at which customers call your service. Their configuration determines a caller routing experience  as follows.

Overview of Opening Hours

Nimbus UI steps

The default state in a calendar determines how the service should "react" according to the time it is called.            Periods in your calendar override the default status. Whenever no period is defined, the default applies again. Workflows - in particular the "Check Opening Hours" activity. determines the handling of your calendar periods. Service Settings apply the configured calendar. This also allows you to define primary and secondar calendars per service (e.g. Holidays and Service-Specific calendars).

Understanding Active / Primary / Secondary Hours

Each team may decide if the opening hours are applied as primary or secondary calendars within their General Service Settings .

RULESET: PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OPENING HOURS

Opening Hours Period Ruleset:   If at least one defined period defined  in the primary opening hours calendar, this period is prioritized. If there is no period in defined primary calendar, the secondary calendar period is applied. If no appointment is found in either calendar (with a secondary configured), the "Default" state of the first calendar is used. The default of the secondary calendar never applies in a two-calendar scenario. If the secondary calendar has no periods defined it is effectively ignored.
🔍 Rule of thumb:  Primary Defined? > Secondary Defined? > Both no? > Use Primary Default!
Show me an example In this example there are two calendars defined: one provided the Admin (e.g. Company-Wide special holidays) and one "Service Specific" calendar created by a Team Owner. 💡 For simplicity we're assuming these calendars operate on a "whole day" basis for one week, ignoring daily hours. 💡 Each day will be handled differently to illustrate a case from the ruleset above. The calling customer will experience the service status as follows: On Monday the primary calendar has a "holiday" defined. → The service workflow will react according to the path defined for holidays (usually a closed-announcement), otherwise the default applies (also closed). On Tuesday the primary calendar is default "closed", however the secondary has a special period defined. → In this case the the secondary calendar takes precedence. On Wednesday the primary calendar is default "closed", however the secondary has an "open" period defined. → In this case the secondary calendar "open" period takes precedence. On Thursday the primary calendar and secondary calendar have a default status, but no specific periods defined. → The primary default "closed is used, secondary default gets always ignored. On Friday the primary calendar has a special event type defined. → Depending on how the service workflow is configured, it will react to the "special" primary calendar period (e.g. same as Tuesday).

 

Creating Opening Hours

New Opening Hours can be defined from within Configuration either by Service Owners or Admins. 

Within the Nimbus UI:

1. Head to Configuration > Opening Hours 
2. Click on "Create New"   
   ⮑ the "Create Opening Hours" view opens.
3. Specify a Name for your calendar entry.💡 This name will be used to identify the opening hours entry in listings and selections.
4. Specify an Organization Unit to define where the Calendar will be available.         
   💡 When a Tenant Admin accesses the Config Administration to create an Opening Hours entry a shared calendar can be made available to multiple services.
5. Specify a "Default" state that applies when no other periods are defined in the calendar.         
   💡 We recommend to leave it at: Closed and work with specific periods to define working hours.

Calendar UI Elements

An Opening Hours calendar consists of the following elements:

Name	Definition
Calendar Popup	Allow you to switch between days, switch resolution (day, week, month) or jump back to present day. Also contains a calendar view for quick selection.
Calendar Period         (Colored block item)	Create a new period by double clicking into the blank calendar space or click "Create Period" You can edit any existing period entry by double clicking it         → refer to "Create Period" chapter below. Recurring entries are marked with an circular arrow icon at the top left The "x" at the top right deletes entries. → You will be asked to delete series or single periods.
Show Full Day / Show Business Hours         (toggle)	Allows to expand the default view vertically to a full day's length or just a 8 AM to 8 PM view. 💡 Default view is "business hours".
Day / Week / Month View         (switch)	Allows to view periods either on current day, week or a monthly calendar. 💡 Default view is "week".

Editing Calendars

 To define a new time period in your Opening Hours:

1. Click " Create Period ".💡 Alternatively you can simply double click into the calendar to start creating a new item. The place where you click determines the start time (top row for "all-day" events).    
   ⮑ A dialog to configure the new time period opens      
   ⮑ Available fields and properties change based on recurrence and are defined as follows:  

Title	Free Text, no functional effect aside from showing as period title in the Opening Hours calendar.
Type	The type of the period which also determines the branching path of your selected Workflow Template.   🔍 While editing your Workflow the "Check Opening Hours" step will determine which type of period currently applies and branches out accordingly. → Refer to the Check Activities > “Check Opening Hours”.
Time Zone	Used to specify a time offset for teams that work in different time zones. 💡 When configuring this for a remote team, set it to the time zone where the service team is situated to correctly offset the period.
All Day	Toggle which deactivates the time selection. 💡 Best used for holidays or extended special opening hours.
Start / End	Used to specify the time of a single event. Can also be used to span across multiple days. 💡 Note that when you change the Start time the End time shifts accordingly to keep the period length consistent.
Recurrence	Used to define recurring events.  💡 If recurrence is set to "None" the event is one-time only. ☝ You may want to leave the "Start" and "End" date parameters as is. Otherwise the events in the series will be treated as a timespan, crossing over from the starting day to the end day in a long block. Especially in recurrence-situations this can cause periods conflicts and potential overlaps. Show me an example... An example for extended special opening hours on every other weekend 💡 The Opening Hours calendar is default "closed" in this example: Define Start and End of your opening hours. The typical timespan would be on the same day (e.g. 10:00 to 16:30) Set the "weekly" Recurrence of your period. In this example we have a "weekly" occurrence for every 2 weeks. Define the days on which the recurrence applies.  Result: Our 3-day period on every 2nd weekend.
Recur every	✅ Shows when → Daily recurrence is set Allows to set an interval at which the period should reoccur: "Recur every X days" - allows to set an interval of days (including weekends) on which this should reoccur. "Weekday" - sets the event to reoccur ever business weekday (Mo-Fr) 💡 The "Days" counter will be ignored.
Repeat On	✅ Shows when → Weekly recurrence is set For Weekly recurrence you can set the weekdays where this period should reoccur.
End After	✅ Shows when  “End after” or "End by" recurrence is set

2. Fill in all details as you require for your calendar period.
3. Click Save & Apply to create the entry.

Putting your Opening Hours to use

Your opening hours need to be handled and applied before taking effect. The steps necessary will be covered below.

Step 1 - Workflow Setup

☝ Important: When using your new or existing opening hours, ensure to handle all exit cases of calendar events (open, closed, special, holiday, default) in your "Check Opening Hours" Workflow Activity.

💡If no "Check Opening Hours" activity is defined in your workflow, the opening hours will be effectively ignored and your service is always reachable.

Step 2 - Service Settings

For your calendar to take effect you need to assign it on your service General Service Settings >  Opening Hours. → After this assignment the opening hours will take effect immediately. Existing calls will still be handled according to the previous settings.

🔍Your currently applicable "Opening hours" are evaluated at the point of an incoming call. As the "Check Opening Hours" Activity is reached, one opening state is returned by Nimbus. It doesn't matter if a Primary, Secondary or no Opening Hours calendar was the source.

This means that ...

• ... if no Opening Hours were defined in your settings, the default exit in the activity is taken.
• ... if a particular calendar period is not handled in a workflow (e.g. a "special" period, your calls may get lost.

💡As a general rule we recommend to handle all exits on your "Check Opening Hours" activity, even if they all point to an identicial (following) activity.

Step 3 - Consider Impacts: Other Services, Reachability, KPI

☝ As you make new Opening Hours calendars availabe in your Tenant – e.g. by placing them in high level Organization Units – please keep in mind:

• Every service that that can access an Opening Hours calendar (via shared Organization Units) may also apply it in General Service Settings .
• Opening Hours do not reflect your service's overall presence status or reachability. The Opening Hours feature is primarily used for workflow handling and routing. Keep this in mind when sharing Opening Hours configurations with other services, as they may handle cases differently, based on their available users to handle incoming tasks.
• Keep in mind that opening hours can still impact your Reporting KPI, as incoming calls could get lost when the calendar periods are not handled by a service's workflow. Vice-versa, a change to a calendar default could “invert” the workflow handling logic, suddenly making a service reachable when it shouldn't be.

Check before you edit existing (productive, shared) calendars

☝ When your calendar is already in productive use, note that saved changes will take effect immediately upon the next incoming service task. → Make sure to take necessary precautions:

• Check in the Opening Hours overview in Configuration if calendars are already in use. Any calendar used as "Primary" or "Secondary" column was already applied within the respective Service Settings. 

• Edit productively used calendars outside of normal operation hours or work with copies to switch to.
• Communicate internally when you make sweeping changes to a calendar, e.g. when adjusting core work hours or holidays.