Team working hours that decide who gets the next conversation
Each person in Sektra sets the days and hours they work, in their own time zone, and the inbox routes around them. Round robin and load-balanced assignment skip anyone who is away, on Do not disturb or outside their hours, and the top bar says in words when someone is back. A person's open conversations can be kept, unassigned or reassigned when they go away. It is built for teams spread across time zones and for the handover at the end of a shift.
Team working hours routing is the rule that a new conversation goes to someone who is at work. A shared inbox that assigns in rotation without that rule hands a conversation to a person who left two hours ago. The customer then waits until morning while the teammate who is online sees nothing in their list. The usual fixes are a manual Away switch that people forget, or a shift schedule kept in another tool.
Sektra keeps the schedule with the person. Working hours are set once in the profile, in the person's own zone, and read by assignment, by the availability chip teammates see, by the status in the top bar and by rules. Away still exists for a day off, and a calendar out-of-office event can set it without a click. Everything else follows from the hours.
Working hours per teammate in their own time zone
The Working hours card under Settings, Profile lists the days of the week with up to four time ranges each, read in the time zone set on the profile. A range may run overnight, so a night shift from 22:00 to 06:00 is one range rather than two. With no hours set a person is treated as available whenever they are not away, which is how the inbox behaved before. The hours are the person's own and are not shared across the account.
Away, Do not disturb and a status in words
Away is chosen from the avatar menu until you are back, until tomorrow or until Monday, and Do not disturb is a switch on the same card for a stretch of focused work. The top bar shows the current status in words, such as Outside your hours, back at 9:00 AM, and teammates see an availability chip beside a name in the assign menu and the team list. Away wins over everything, then Do not disturb, then the hours. With a calendar connected, an out-of-office event can set Away on its own.
Assignment that skips people who are away or outside their hours
Round robin and load-balanced assignment consider only the teammates who are available at that moment, so a conversation arriving at 18:30 goes to the person whose hours cover it. When nobody in the rotation is available, assignment falls back to the whole rotation rather than leaving the conversation unowned, and the log names the candidates it considered. A conversation assigned by hand goes to whoever you pick, available or not.
What happens to open conversations when someone goes away
The Conversations while you are away choice on the Working hours card decides what happens to a person's open conversations when they become unavailable. Keep leaves them assigned, Unassign returns them to Unassigned, and Reassign hands them back through the inbox's own assignment rule in inboxes that have one. The change is applied within two minutes of the person going away, each conversation gets an activity line, and the same conversations are left alone when the person is back.
Rules that check whether the assignee is available
A rule can check that the assignee is away or available, that the day is one of those you list, or that the time is between two hours on the inbox's clock. Combined with the other checks, a rule can reassign a conversation whose owner is away, alert a channel when a message arrives outside the hours anyone covers, or apply a different service level on weekends. The assistant drafts a rule that uses these checks from a plain sentence.
What your team gets
Hours in the person's own zone
Days and ranges are set once on the profile, with overnight ranges allowed.
Routing that respects them
Automatic assignment skips anyone away, on Do not disturb or outside hours, unless nobody is available.
A status everyone can read
The top bar and the assign menu say who is available and when the others are back.
A plan for the handover
Open conversations are kept, unassigned or reassigned when a person goes away.
Working hours setup in four steps
The steps follow the order a new workspace takes them in, and they use the names of the screens as they appear in the app.
- 1
Open the Working hours card
Under Settings, open Profile and find the Working hours card, then turn on Set working hours.
- 2
Set the days and hours
Pick the working days and enter the ranges for each, in the time zone shown on the profile.
- 3
Decide what happens when you are away
Choose Keep, Unassign or Reassign under Conversations while you are away, and use Do not disturb when you need a quiet stretch.
- 4
Let assignment follow
Round robin and load balancing on every shared inbox now skip teammates who are away or outside their hours.
Common questions
These are the questions teams ask before they set this up. If yours is not covered here, send it to us.
How does shared inbox routing respect working hours?
Each teammate sets working hours on their profile, in their own time zone. When a new conversation is assigned by round robin or by load, Sektra considers only the teammates who are available at that moment. People who are away, on Do not disturb or outside their hours are skipped. A conversation assigned by hand goes to whoever is chosen.
What happens when nobody is available?
Assignment falls back to the whole rotation, so the conversation still receives an owner rather than waiting unassigned. The assignment log shows which teammates were considered. A rule can also alert a channel when a message arrives outside the hours anyone covers.
Do working hours work across time zones?
Yes. Hours are read in the time zone set on each person's profile, so a teammate in Lisbon and one in Singapore each enter their own day. The status in the top bar and the availability chips teammates see are computed for the present moment in each person's zone.
Can a rule act when the assignee is away?
Yes. A rule can check that the assignee is away or available, that the day is one you list, or that the time is between two hours. It can then reassign, tag, alert or apply a service level. The assistant can draft such a rule from a sentence like reassign billing conversations when the owner is away.
Other parts of the same inbox
Sektra compared with the tool you use now
Each page states what the other tool is built for, what it costs and what changes when a team moves to Sektra.
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