What are working hours?

Working hours tell us when each person is available to work. Think of them as the foundation for all your scheduling — they help with accurate time off tracking, make manual scheduling easier, and can power our brand new schedule generation feature.

If you’ve previously used shift patterns in Assembled, working hours will be familiar! We’ve just changed the way you set them up to give you more flexibility and better functionality.

In this article:

• What are working hours?
• How are working hours different from shift patterns?
• What happens to my existing shift patterns?
• How do I set up working hours?
• Can I create working hours for a specific person?
• How do I apply working hours to multiple people at once?
• How do I manage working hours?
• Can someone have multiple working hours?

What are working hours?

Working hours define when people can work. They show us when someone is available for shifts, breaks, and other scheduled activities.

Working hours have four main purposes:

• Time off accounting. We’ll only apply time off requests that overlap with the person’s actual working hours, so you can track balances and coverage.
• Fixing schedule problems. When a schedule doesn’t match someone’s working hours, you’ll be able to tell on the Staffing timeline so you can make changes.
• Manual scheduling. We’ll show each person’s working hours on the Staffing timeline so it’s easier to update your schedule manually.
• Automatic scheduling. Our new schedule generation feature will use your team’s working hours to create schedules from scratch — and save you time.

How are working hours different from shift patterns?

Working hours give you more flexibility than our old shift patterns feature. Here's what's we improved:

• Longer patterns. You can now create working hours patterns up to 13 weeks long. This is useful if people in your company follow with multi-week rotations instead of simple one-week repeating schedules.
• Start and end dates. Because people’s hours can change over time, you can assign working hours that start and end on specific dates. You can set up someone's current working hours and also plan future changes that will take effect later. The end date is optional, in case you want the working hours to be applied indefinitely.
• Smart assignment. You can assign working hours to entire groups based on attributes like teams, sites, channels, or queues. When you add new people to these groups, they'll automatically be assigned the right working hours.

What happens to my existing shift patterns?

When we turn on the working hours feature for your company account, your existing shift patterns will be automatically converted. Here’s what to expect:

• All shift patterns with people assigned will automatically become working hours.
• All migrated working hours will have a start date (the migration date) and no end date. You can add an end date later if you need one.
• Custom names you've created will be kept.
• The Shift patterns menu item will disappear.
• Working hours will appear on the Scheduling rules page.

How do I set up working hours?

Working hours are set up in your scheduling rules. You have 2 options for creating working hours for your team.

Add manually

1. From the Scheduling rules page, select Add rule and then select Create manually.
2. Select Working hours.
3. Add days by selecting the plus icons [+]. For each day you add, choose the specific hours this person or group should work.
4. If you need to create shift rotations, select Add another week.
5. Enter the total rest time in each shift.
6. Now you’re ready to apply these working hours to people! You can choose individuals or assign to groups like a team, site, queue, or channel.
7. By default, working hours start immediately and continue without an end date. If you want to add start and end dates for the assignment, you can do that here.
8. When you’re done, save your rule.

Upload as a CSV file

1. From the Scheduling rules page, select Add rule and then select Upload working hours.
2. If you’re not sure what format to use, select Download example file, replace the example info with your own info, rename the file, and save it.
3. Once you have your CSV ready, drag and drop or select Browse files to find it.
4. Make sure everything looks good in the preview. You can make any changes you need to, then select Upload.

Can I create working hours for a specific person?

Yes! You can create a working hours rule and apply it to a single person or a group of individuals. This can be useful if you have a few employees who need to follow different schedules from the rest of your team.

For example, let’s say you have a team member who has a medical exception and needs to work a different shift length than everyone else. You can create custom working hours and only apply them to this person to help your schedules follow this requirement.

How do I apply working hours to multiple people at once?

Instead of setting up working hours for each individual person, you can bulk assign. This saves time and ensures consistency across your team.

To use this feature, assign each working hours rule to an attribute like a team, channel, queue, or skill.

For example, let’s say you assign working hours to the attribute “Risk team”. When you do this, everyone who’s currently on the Risk team will automatically be assigned those working hours. When you add a new person to this team, they’ll get the same working hours automatically.

How do I manage working hours?

If you need to make changes, update the dates, or assign new people or groups to your working hours:

1. Visit the Scheduling rules page.
2. Find the working hours rule you want to update. To make it easier to find, you can filter this page to see only working hours.
3. Select the three-dot icon [•••] next to the rule name, and select Edit.
4. Make changes to the rule or how it’s assigned.
5. Save your changes. You’re all set.

To save or share your working hours as a CSV file:

1. Visit the Scheduling rules page.
2. Select Export.
3. Select Working hours to automatically download the file.

Can someone have multiple working hours?

People can only have one active working hours rule at a time.

However, you can assign different working hours to a person over time, as long as their date ranges don’t overlap.

For example, let’s say your new group of trainees need to work the morning shift for 2 months before they can take later shifts. You can use one working hours rule to handle the morning shifts, and another one to handle the later shifts. Assign both rules to the trainees, and use the date ranges for each one to capture when the working hours should switch over.

Good to know:

• You can view Scheduling rules "By person" to see a given agent's working hours for the week you've selected. 
  • If there are any overlapping rules - we'll highlight that as a potential conflict. We recommend reviewing these conflicts and adding any relevant end dates for old scheduling rules to make sure an agent's schedule appears correctly throughout Assembled.
• When you view or export info on the People management page, you’ll only find each person’s active working hours.
• To find past and future working hours for team members, visit the Scheduling rules page.