Set your business hours, boards and response targets

What you will have

• Confirm the instance's Business Days and Business Hours Start/End, and know that this one value also drives dispatch's default tech-booking window and the recurring-ticket scheduler.
• Add a holiday to the calendar, and know why an unresolved region is a bigger problem than an empty list.
• See the boards a trial ships with, create one more, and know what a board actually controls beyond "which tab it's under".
• Set a First Response target per priority on SLA Display - not SLA Policies - and watch a real ticket's SLA badge count down against the target you just set.

Why it works this way

Steps

1. 1

   Go to Settings, click Service Levels, then click Business Hours & Holidays.

   Clicking Service Levels in the sidebar opens its first page, SLA Policies - the shared badge/timer plumbing described above. Business Hours & Holidays sits right below SLA Display in that same group.

   

2. 2

   Confirm Business Days and Business Hours Start/End read Mon-Fri, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

   This trial already defaulted to exactly that, in the instance's own timezone (America/Chicago) - Sun and Sat stay unchecked. This is the single value the SLA clock, dispatch's default booking window, and the recurring-ticket scheduler all read; change it here, not on the read-only mirror under Dispatch & Scheduling > Calendar Sync.

   

3. 3

   In the Holidays card below, tick a day the shop is closed and click Save.

   Region had already resolved to United States of America from the instance's timezone, so the current year's public and optional holidays are listed with a checkbox each; "Day after Thanksgiving Day" ships unticked as Optional, so ticking it and saving adds it to the days SLA, dispatch, and recurring tickets all skip. Use the Name/date/"Repeats yearly" row underneath instead for a closure day that isn't on the built-in calendar at all.

   Note: If Region shows unresolved instead, pick one before relying on any of this - an unresolved region isn't an empty holiday list, it's zero holidays skipped anywhere.

   

4. 4

   Go to Settings > Service Desk > Ticket Boards to see what's already there.

   A fresh trial starts with two boards, Help Desk (marked Default - the board a new ticket lands on when no rule picks one) and Projects (a project board for multi-step work tracked as parent tickets with sub-tasks); this trial already carries a third, Escalations, added in the next step during earlier setup.

   

5. 5

   Click + Add Board, name it, describe it, and click Create Board.

   Name and Description are the only fields a plain board needs - Internal Board, Exclude from AI, Exclude from SLA, Project Board, Default View, Kanban columns, Internal Notifications, and Access all default off or blank and can be set later from the board's own row. A board is a real object with its own defaults, not just a label on a tab: the board flagged Default is where a ticket lands when nothing else picks one (a Ticket Rule first, then this global default - a board can never be left off every board), Exclude from AI hides a board's tickets from Elise's search and agendas, Exclude from SLA clears SLA deadlines for tickets on it, and Internal Notifications, Notify Client on Reply, and Notify Client on Close decide who hears about activity there. This trial's Projects board already covers project work, so Escalations was created instead - a board to pull a ticket onto once its response is at risk or has already breached. Escalations already exists on this trial from that earlier step, so the form here is shown filled in with its name and description without clicking Create Board a second time.

   

6. 6

   See the new board added to the list.

   Escalations shows as the third board, active by default. The same three boards - Help Desk, Projects, Escalations - appear as their own tabs on the Service Desk ticket list, since ticket boards are exactly what drives that tab strip.

   

7. 7

   Open Settings > Service Levels > SLA Display and set the Critical Response Time to 1, Unit Hours.

   Each of the four priority cards - Critical, High, Medium, Low - has its own Response Time, Unit, Counting (Business Hours or Calendar), an optional Resolution time, and its own Save Changes button; nothing here is shared across priorities until you save each one. Critical came in defaulted to 2 hours business hours, so this changed its Current Response Target to "1 hours (business hours)".

   Note: The Counting dropdown reads "Business Hours (M-F 8a-6p)" as fixed label text - it does not reflect your real configured hours, even though the SLA clock underneath it does.

   

8. 8

   Set Medium's Response Time to 6 hours and Low's to 1 (Unit Days, Counting Business Hours), saving each card.

   High already defaulted to 4 hours business hours and needed no change. Low's target now reads "1 business day".

   Note: Under Business Hours counting, "1 Day" is a fixed 480-minute (8-hour) shorthand, not a measurement of this instance's actual 9-hour business day (8:00 AM-5:00 PM) - "8" with Unit Hours and "1" with Unit Days store the identical number.

   

9. 9

   Create a Critical ticket for Bluebird Dental and check its SLA badge.

   Bluebird Dental's Default Ticket Assignee was set to Jordan Reyes first (Clients > Bluebird Dental > Edit > Settings), so this staff-created ticket stayed assigned to someone other than its creator and its SLA badge showed a live "RESPOND BY" countdown. Hovering the badge named the exact deadline: created after business hours, the new 1-hour Critical target rolled forward to the next business day and read "Waiting for first response - SLA due: Sep 15, 9:00 AM" - 8:00 AM business open plus the 1-hour target just set.

   Note: A ticket you create and stay assigned to counts as responded the instant you save it ("Responded in 0s") instead of counting down - assign it to someone else, as this demo client's Default Ticket Assignee does, to keep a live badge.

   

Other ways to do this

If it did not work

• If a ticket's SLA due time looks wrong, check Company Profile's Timezone and this page's Business Days/Hours first - both feed the exact same clock the badge counts against.
• If new tickets keep landing on the wrong board, check Ticket Rules first - an explicit rule or PSA-carried board wins before the global Default board ever gets a say.
• If a ticket you just created shows "Responded in 0s" instead of a countdown, that's self-acknowledgment, not a bug - it only happens when the creator is still the assignee, so reassign at creation (or set a Default Ticket Assignee on the client) to see a live badge.
• If holidays don't seem to be skipped anywhere, confirm the Holidays card actually shows a resolved Region - with none picked, SLA, dispatch, and recurring tickets treat every calendar day, including the ones you ticked, as a working day.

Questions this page answers