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Route after-hours conversations to an on-call team

Have a smaller on-call team receive new conversations outside business hours: two opening-hours rules, a team link, and one automation rule.

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Route after-hours conversations to an on-call team

To have your main team receive conversations only during business hours and a smaller on-call team take over after hours, you need two opening-hours rules, a team-to-hours link, and one automation rule: Outside business hours → Assign to the on-call team. This recipe walks through the exact setup, using the tiered support model’s Tier 1 — General as the daytime team.

Before you start

  • Admin permissions on Teams, Opening Hours, and Automations
  • A main daytime team already set as the default on your channels (e.g. Tier 1 — General)

Step 1 — Create the on-call team

In Settings → Teams, create a team such as Tier 1 — On-Call with a smaller member list — the people who actually cover evenings and weekends. Detailed steps: Create a team.

Step 2 — Define the opening-hours rules

In Settings → Opening Hours, define two rules:

  • Business Hours — Your normal working window
  • After Hours — Everything outside it

See Set up opening hours for the rule editor detail.

In Settings → Teams, link your main team to the Business Hours rule. This is what downstream features read to know whether the team is open.

Step 4 — Add the after-hours automation rule

In Settings → Automation Rules, create a rule that fires on new conversations outside business hours:

  • Condition: outside business hours
  • Action: Assign team → Tier 1 — On-Call

Save and enable. During business hours the rule doesn’t fire, so conversations stay with the channel’s default team.

Verify it worked

  1. During business hours, send a test conversation — it should land with the daytime team as usual.
  2. Outside business hours (or after adjusting the rule’s window for testing), send another test conversation — the automation should assign it to Tier 1 — On-Call. Check the conversation history for an entry showing the rule fired.

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