When a skill is open
A skill is open when three things apply at the same time:
- One of its Business hours entries is running.
- It is opened manually — in the Automatic conversation distribution list with Open manually.
- None of its holiday calendars currently has an entry.
A new skill has no business hours and is closed manually; so it accepts nothing until you have set up both.
If a skill is closed, the server does not distribute new calls, chats and voicemails but gives them a state — in this order of precedence Manually closed, Holiday closed or Out of business hours. The flow reacts to this, for example with an announcement, see When a limit is reached. The server queues emails and faxes and distributes them as soon as the skill opens again. Conversations that are already waiting or connected when the skill closes continue to be served with Keep conversations alive.
The calendars
The Business hours, Callback limits and Constraints tabs are calendars in month view. The context menu offers New entry, New recurring entry, Edit entry, Edit series and Delete entry. In an entry’s window, you set the start, end, all-day and the recurrence on the Appointment tab. The times apply in the time zone of the computer on which you use the Administration.
If two entries overlap, the one with the later start applies. The server checks the calendars every second.
Business hours
Each entry is an opening time. Create the usual hours as a recurring entry, for example Monday to Friday from 8:00 to 18:00. Without an entry, the skill is always closed.
Holidays
On the Holidays tab, you choose which holiday calendars apply to this skill: drag them from Available holidays to active holidays, or select them and press →. If one of the active calendars currently has an entry, the skill is closed, in all channels. The flow can announce the name of the holiday.
You create the calendars themselves under Global elements › Holidays — see Holiday calendars. The same calendar can be assigned to many skills.
Callback limits
If the flow offers a caller times for a callback with the Callback scheduler, the Callback limits restrict how many callbacks are possible per period. Each calendar entry is a period; Max number of callbacks holds how many callbacks it can take.
The callback scheduler proposes whole entries, for example “today 14:00 to 15:00”, as long as callbacks are still free in them — for the next seven days, each at least 30 minutes apart. Without entries or with a limit of 0, it offers no times.