Business hours

The business hours feature allows you to specify the time range that your team is expected to respond to customers. Leverage business hours to make your analytics more accurate, or use them to automate workflows using Front’s rules engine.

You can specify workspace-level business hours per workspace, or inbox-level business hours per shared inbox. This is useful for global organizations with distinct business hours per office or time zone. 

• Workspace-level business hours: Each workspace can have its own business hours setting. Multiple workspaces are available on the Scale plan or above.

• Inbox-level business hours (Scale plan or above): Each shared inbox can have its own business hours setting. This is useful if you need to set up multiple business hours in one workspace.

• Time zone setting: Select the time zone for your business hours.

• Access: A company admin must also be a workspace admin to change workspace-level and inbox-level business hours.

If you have multiple business hours set up, Front will select the most specific hours to apply to a conversation. Inbox-level business hours are prioritized over workspace-level hours. If a conversation is in multiple inboxes with business hours set up, Front will prioritize the inbox that is first in alphabetical order. See below for examples.

A conversation is in a single inbox: 

A conversation is in multiple inboxes (e.g. in both Inbox A and B):

• Your business hours are set for 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM and a message arrives at 4:30 PM. Your team replies the next day at 9:30 AM. Reply time will count as 1 hour.

• Your business hours are set for 9:00AM - 5:00PM and a message arrives at 6:00 PM. Your team replies the next day at 9:30 AM. Reply time will count as 30 minutes.

You can set up and manage workspace-level business hours in Front Analytics. You must have the workspace admin role for the workspace. A company admin must have the workspace admin role to manage workspace business hours.

Step 1

Open Front Analytics by clicking the Analytics graph icon on the top left of Front.

If you have multiple workspaces, choose the desired workspace from the workspace selection dropdown.

Step 2

Click Edit business hours at the top of your report. It will open the business hours menu showing your current business hours that are set up. If this is your first time setting up, then your business hours will be turned off by default.

Step 3

As you click on the days of the week, you'll be able to customize business hours for each day you've selected. You will also see the time zone that the hours are being set for.

Step 4

Click Save when done.

Step 1

Open Front Analytics by clicking the Analytics graph icon on the top left of Front.

If you have multiple workspaces, choose the desired workspace from the workspace selection dropdown.

Step 2

At the top of the report, click Edit business hours. It will open the business hours menu showing your current business hours that are set up. Click Clear business hours.

Step 3

You'll be prompted to confirm that you'd like to clear business hours. Click the Clear business hours button.

You can set up and manage inbox-level business hours in your shared inbox settings. You must have the workspace admin role for the workspace where the inbox is located. A company admin must have the workspace admin role to manage inbox business hours.

This feature is available only on the Scale plan or above.

Step 1

Click the gear icon on the top right of Front, then select company or workspace settings in the left sidebar.

Step 2

Click Inboxes in the left sidebar. Select the inbox you’d like to set business hours for.

Step 3

Click the Business hours tab, then select the applicable days, start and end times, and time zone for the inbox. 

Step 4

Click Save.

Step 5

You'll be prompted to confirm that you'd like to set business hours. Click Save.

Step 1

Click the gear icon on the top right of Front, then select company or workspace settings in the left sidebar.

Step 2

Click Inboxes in the left sidebar. Select the inbox you’d like to clear business hours for.

Step 3

Select the Business hours tab, then click Clear business hours.

Step 4

You'll be prompted to confirm that you'd like to clear business hours. Click the Clear business hours button.

No. Business hours only apply to shared inboxes.

Option 1: One Front workspace (Growth plan or above)

If you have teams in multiple time zones, set workspace-level business hours to include other locations to ensure their data is captured. For instance, if your team covers both EST and PST time zones from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM respectively, but you are based in PST, then set business hours from 6:00 AM - 5:00 PM to cover all working times.

Option 2: Multiple Front workspaces (Scale plan or above)

Create a Front workspace for each time zone, then set up workspace-level business hours per workspace.

Option 3: Multiple shared inboxes (Scale plan or above)

Set up a shared inbox for each time zone, then set up inbox-level business hours per inbox.

When business hours are set, hours that fall outside of them will not count towards reply/handle times, giving you a clearer picture of how your teammates are performing. Keep in mind that if you deactivate Saturday and Sunday, but respond on Sunday to a message received on Saturday, the response time for that conversation will be 0 (because 0 business hours passed between its receipt and handling).

For performance reasons, business hours are applied every time you receive or send a message. This means that if you edit your business hours, it won't change the reply time of past messages. It will only affect future conversations.

If you use the Shifts feature for teams that work across multiple time zones, teammate analytics will calculate activities based on their defined shifts, even if it's outside of defined business hours. Teammates who do not have a shift defined will fallback to having their analytics activities calculate based on business hours.

Use an analytics messages export and filter by the message date/time within the export to see how many came in during a certain time.

Workspace-level business hours are available on the Growth plan or above. Inbox-level business hours and multiple workspaces are available on the Scale plan or above. Some legacy plans with different names may also have these features.