Set up business hours for Webex Contact Center

You can plan the contact center working and non-working hours in advance as well as take emergency actions for issues. Business hours comprises working hours, holidays, and overrides with recurring capabilities that automatically repeat based on daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly patterns. Working hours configuration can optionally refer to holiday lists and overrides. Once you define working hours, these refer to flows for appropriate routing behavior, enabling you to do a streamlined scheduling.

Manage working hours

You can configure working hours to define one or more shifts. A shift is a duration which you must identify for the operation of a specific contact center. Use shifts to define regular work hours, peak hours, or off-peak hours based on your business requirements. Working hours serve as the foundation that holiday lists and overrides can modify when needed.

You can configure working hours to define one or more shifts. A shift is a duration which you must identify for the operation of a specific contact center. Use a shift to define regular work hours, peak hours, off-peak hours based on your business requirements.

Create working hours

1	Sign in to Control Hub.
2	Navigate to Services > Contact Center .
3	From the Contact Center navigation pane, select Customer Experience > Business Hours.
4	In the Working Hours section, click Create new working hours.
5	In General settings, enter a name and description of the working hours.
6	Choose time zone details from the drop-down list.
7	In Define working hours, select Add shift. You can add shifts for every day of the week or for specific days. You can create single or multiple shifts within a day.
8	In the Add shift pop-up window, provide an appropriate name for the shift based on your business requirement.
9	All days of the week are selected by default. If there is a need to define working hours for specific days, you check the check box against the days that you want to apply the working hours. You can't create shifts with overlapping time range. In such cases, an error notification informs that you must adjust the date and time. You can create multiple shifts for a single day without the overlap of time duration.
10	Choose the start and end time. You can apply only one time range when you select multiple days in a shift.
11	Click Save. The shift details are visible in the Define working hours section. To edit a shift, click the name of the shift. The Add Shift pop-up window opens. Edit the details and click Save. To delete a shift, click the name of the shift. The Add Shift pop-up window opens. Click Delete Shift.
12	In Additional settings, choose a holiday list from the drop-down list, if it is available. This is optional to select and is available only if a holiday list is created based on business needs. For creating holiday lists, see Create a holiday list.
13	Choose an override from the drop-down list. The override that you create is available here for specific timezones. Only overrides matching the timezone of the working hours are applicable. For creating overrides, see Create an override.
14	Click Create. The new working hours are available on the Working hours page.

What to do next

After creating working hours and adding shifts, you can create and apply holiday lists to working hours. For more information, see Create a holiday list.
You can create and apply overrides to working hours. For more information, see Create an override.
For managing shifts, see Manage Business Hours.
During non-business (off) hours, you can configure the business hours activity to play an appropriate message to convey customers about the next agent availability.

Manage holiday lists

Holiday lists let you define non-working days that automatically repeat based on patterns you set. Instead of creating individual holidays one by one, you can now set them to recur—like every first Monday of the month or every December 25th. You can set recurrence patterns including daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly schedules to automate your holiday planning.

Duration Flexibility: Unlike traditional scheduling systems, the initial duration of a holiday list does not need to match the recurrence day or month. The recurrence does not have to occur on the same day of week or month as the initial duration. For example, if a holiday list is initially set for February 3rd through 4th (48 hours) and recurrence is set for the 10th day of every month, the holiday list will recur on the 10th of each month for 48 hours without needing to adjust the original duration.

End-of-Month Handling: If the recurrence is set to the 29th, 30th, or 31st day of the month, the system applies the holiday on the last day of each month. The user interface provides a warning when this occurs.

Priority Ranking: When holiday lists have overlapping dates, you can resolve conflicts by ranking them. Simply drag and drop items to set their priority order—higher-ranked items take precedence over lower-ranked ones.

Same Day Priority Interactions: Flows leverage business hours at run-time, so when there are conflicting holiday lists or overrides on the same day, the higher priority item takes precedence. For example:

Holiday List Priority #1 is set for 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Holiday List Priority #2 is set for all day

Priority #2 will be active from 12:00 AM - 1:59 AM

Priority #1 will supersede Priority #2 from 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Priority #2 will resume from 4:01 PM - 11:59 PM

This priority system ensures that more specific or critical schedule changes can override broader schedule rules during overlapping time periods.

Create a holiday list

Define non-working days with daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly recurrence patterns—like maintenance windows or annual company holidays.

1	Sign in to Control Hub.
2	Navigate to Services > Contact Center .
3	From the Contact Center navigation pane, select Customer Experience > Business Hours.
4	In Holiday Lists section, click Create new holidays.
5	In General settings, enter a name and description of the holiday list.
6	In Holiday lists, click Add a new holiday to add a holiday. You can enter details for the row.
7	Provide a name for the holiday.
8	Select the Duration by selecting the start and end date range for the duration along with the. Time range of start and end time. If you select All day if the holiday applies to the entire day, and time range will not be applicable. For recurrence choose for one of the following available options: Daily: Repeats every day or every X day Weekly: Repeats weekly on specific days of the week Monthly: Repeats monthly by date or by day position Yearly: Repeats annually on the same date
9	Click Create to create the list of holidays.

What to do next

To manage holiday lists, see Manage Business Hours.

Manage overrides

Overrides define exceptions to your regular shifts or working hours that can also repeat automatically. Use overrides for situations like closing early every Friday, extending hours during busy seasons, or emergency schedule changes. Configure recurring patterns—daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly—to automate schedule exceptions without manual setup.

Duration Flexibility: Unlike traditional scheduling systems, the initial duration of an override does not need to match the recurrence day or month. The recurrence does not have to occur on the same day of week or month as the initial duration. For example, if an override is initially set for February 3rd (Tuesday) through 4th (Wednesday) and recurrence is set for every Friday, the override will recur every Friday for 48 hours without changing the initial start day."

End-of-Month Handling: If the recurrence is set to the 29th, 30th, or 31st day of the month, the system applies the override on the last day of each month. The user interface provides a warning when this occurs.

Priority Ranking: When overrides have overlapping dates, you can resolve conflicts by ranking them. Simply drag and drop items to set their priority order—higher-ranked items take precedence over lower-ranked ones.

Same Day Priority Interactions: Flows leverage business hours at run-time, so when there are conflicting overrides on the same day, the higher priority item takes precedence. For example:

Override Priority #1 is set for 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Override Priority #2 is set for all day

Priority #2 will be active from 12:00 AM - 1:59 PM

Priority #1 will supersede Priority #2 from 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Priority #2 will resume from 4:01 PM - 11:59 PM

This priority system ensures that more specific or critical schedule changes can override broader schedule rules during overlapping time periods.

Create an override

Create schedule exceptions with daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly recurrence—such as early closures, extended hours, or emergency changes.

1	Sign in to Control Hub.
2	Navigate to Services > Contact Center .
3	From the Contact Center navigation pane, select Customer Experience > Business Hours.
4	In the Overrides section, click Create Overrides.
5	In General settings, enter a name and description of the override.
6	Choose timezone details from the drop-down list. When creating an override, ensure that the override and business hour are in the same timezone. You can't change the timezone after selecting it.
7	In Overrides, click Add new override. Enter the override details in the new row.
8	Select the Duration by selecting the start and end date range for the duration along with the. Time range of start and end time. If you select All day if the override applies to the entire day, and time range will not be applicable. For recurrence choose for one of the following available opitons: Daily - Repeats every day or every X days Weekly - Repeats weekly on specific days of the week Monthly - Repeats monthly by date or by day position Yearly - Repeats annually on the same date
9	Toggle the state to active or inactive based on when you want to apply the override.
10	Select the check mark to save the override.
11	Click Create to create the override.

What to do next

After creating overrides, you can apply them to working hours. For more information, see Create working hours.
To manage overrides, see Manage Business Hours.

Manage business hours

You can view and manage business hours entities such as working hours, holiday lists, and overrides in the respective sections. You can search for specific working hours, holiday lists, and overrides from the list of entries. When you edit a business hours entity, there's an impact on the associated entities and flows.

1	Sign in to Control Hub.
2	Navigate to Services > Contact Center .
3	From the Contact Center navigation pane, select Customer Experience > Business Hours.
4	Go to Working hours, Holiday lists, or Override, based on your requirement.
5	In the search field, enter the name of the entry. The search results appear based on the inputs.
6	In Filter, use the check box to select the time zone. The search results appear based on the selection. You can't use a filter for holiday lists.
7	To sort entries in ascending and descending order, click the Name, Timezone, or Last Modified header sections. Sort the entries with multiple clicks.
8	Choose an entry to open and edit.
9	Edit the fields and click Save. In General Settings > Referenced by, click Reference list to view the list of entities associated. You can also export this list as a .csv file.
10	To delete a working hours, holiday list or override on the detailed page of the entry, click the delete icon on the right side of the page. If working hours are associated with other entities, you can't delete them. Remove references to all the associated entities and try again.
11	To delete an entry from a list within a holiday list or override, click the delete icon on the right side of the row.
12	A pop-up window displays a message to confirm the deletion. Click Delete. During deletion, if the holiday list is associated with other entities, the system deletes all references to associated entities. During deletion, if the overrides are associated with other entities, the system deletes all references to associated entities.

What to do next

To access working hours, holiday lists, and overrides in your flow and manage your business-specific routing behavior, see the Flow Designer article.

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Set up business hours for Webex Contact Center

Manage working hours

Create working hours

Manage holiday lists

Create a holiday list

Manage overrides

Create an override

Manage business hours

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