Business Hours help you control when human agents are available for conversations and how your flows behave during and outside of working hours. By defining working time windows and linking them to holiday calendars, you can ensure timely support, accurate agent availability, and context-aware automation.

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Feature Overview

Use Business Hours to:
  • Set operating schedules for support teams across timezones.
  • Automatically adjust routing logic based on working days and hours.
  • Respect national holidays by linking to predefined Holiday Groups.
  • Create time-based rules in your flows using the Business Hours node.

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Defining Business Hours

SettingDescription
Name & DescriptionIdentify the purpose of each business hour configuration.
TimezoneAligns schedules with team or office location.
Holiday GroupSkips agent availability on configured holidays.
Daily HoursDefine start and end times per day; supports multiple time slots.
Priority OrderingWhen multiple business hours overlap, Plivo uses the topmost match to evaluate routing.
You can edit, delete, or prioritize multiple entries depending on your operational needs.

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Business Hours Node (Flow Integration)

The Business Hours node in the Flow Builder checks whether the current time falls within your defined business hours. It acts as a branching point in your logic:
  • If the condition is met, the flow continues down the “open” path.
  • Otherwise, it can route to after-hours automation, fallback queues, or task creation.
This enables use cases such as:
  • Live agent handoff only during business hours
  • Custom offline messaging
  • Deferred handling via tasks or follow-up alerts

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Example

You create a “US Business Hours” schedule for 9 AM – 5 PM (IST), Monday to Friday.
In your agent flow:
  • The Business Hours node checks if it’s within this window.
  • If true, the user is routed to a live agent queue.
  • If false, the user receives a message like “Our team is offline right now—we’ll get back to you soon.”