The schedule (with holidays and timezone) used to pause SLA clocks when the team is off.
Without business-hours awareness, an SLA punishes you for nights and weekends you never staffed. See setting SLAs your team can hit.
Why it matters
An SLA measured in raw wall-clock time is unfair to any team that isn’t staffed 24/7. A ticket that arrives at 9pm Friday shouldn’t burn its "two-hour first response" budget overnight when nobody is on. Business hours fix this by defining when the clock counts. The promise customers see — and the metric agents are judged on — both line up with the hours you actually cover.
How it works
A business-hours calendar holds three things: a weekly working schedule, a timezone, and a list of holidays. When an SLA timer is running, it advances only during open hours and pauses outside them. A ticket opened five minutes before closing carries the rest of its budget over to the next working morning, rather than breaching while everyone is asleep. The same calendar can gate automation rules that should only run during staffed hours.
Common pitfalls
- Forgetting holidays, so the clock keeps ticking on days nobody works.
- Using a single timezone for a team that’s actually spread across regions.
- Setting hours that don’t match reality, so first response time looks worse — or better — than the team’s real coverage.
For example, a support desk working Monday–Friday, 9–5 Eastern, sets those hours plus public holidays; a question that lands Saturday night starts its SLA clock Monday at 9am, so the team is measured only against time it could realistically respond in.
How Cherryrise handles it
Cherryrise’s workflow engine applies your business-hours calendar — schedule, timezone, and holidays — when computing SLA timers, so targets reflect the hours you staff rather than the clock on the wall. A ticket that lands after hours simply resumes its clock when the next working period opens, which keeps reporting honest and keeps agents from being penalised for time they were never on shift to cover.