Contents
1. Before You Start
2. Turning Business Hours On or Off
3. Setting Your Weekly Schedule
4. How Business Hours Appear in View Mode
5. Using Business Hours in a Workflow
6. What "Deferred to the Next Opening" Means
7. Frequently Asked Questions
1. Before You Start
You will need: an administrator account in the CRM (the same access used to edit Company Details and to create or edit Workflows).
Where it lives: two places work together — Settings → Company Details (where you turn the feature on and set your hours) and Settings → Workflows (where an individual workflow chooses to respect those hours).
Good to know: Business Hours are off by default. Until an administrator turns them on, automation runs at any time — exactly as it did before. Turning the feature on changes nothing on its own until you also enable it on a specific workflow (see Section 5).
2. Turning Business Hours On or Off
From the CRM, go to Settings → Company Details and edit the page.
You will see two related fields:
Field | Description | Example |
Timezone | Your organization's timezone. This is now its own field and is always shown, on or off. It tells the CRM how to interpret your open/close times. | America/New_York |
Business Hours | An Enabled / Disabled choice that turns the weekly schedule on or off. | Enabled |
Disabled (default): your organization has no business hours. Workflow automation runs at any time. The weekly schedule is hidden.
Enabled: a Monday–Sunday schedule appears so you can define your open hours (see Section 3). After choosing, click Save.
Tip: Setting the Timezone does not, by itself, turn on Business Hours. The timezone is just a setting; the Enabled / Disabled choice is what makes the schedule take effect.
3. Setting Your Weekly Schedule
When you set Business Hours to Enabled, a weekly grid appears, pre-filled with a sensible default — Monday–Friday 9:00 AM–5:00 PM, weekends closed. Adjust it to match your organization, then Save.
For each day:
Control | Purpose |
Open / Closed | Whether the organization operates that day. When set to Closed, the time fields for that day are turned off. |
From | The time the day opens. |
To | The time the day closes. Must be later than From. |
Important: The default schedule is only a starting point shown when you first enable Business Hours. It is not applied behind the scenes — the schedule only takes effect once you enable Business Hours and save it.
4. How Business Hours Appear in View Mode
When you are just viewing Company Details (not editing): The Timezone is always shown.
If Business Hours are off, you will see a single line: Business Hours: Disabled. If Business Hours are on, you will see the full per-day schedule.
This makes it obvious at a glance whether the organization actually has business hours configured.
5. Using Business Hours in a Workflow
Open Settings → Workflows and add or edit a workflow. The Use business hours option appears just below the Recurrence options.
A few things to know about this option:
1. It appears below Recurrence — that is its new, clearer location.
2. It is only available when your organization has enabled Business Hours in Company Details. If you have not, the option is greyed out with a note telling you to enable it there first.
3. It does not apply to "Time Interval" (scheduled) workflows — for those, the option is hidden, because scheduled workflows manage their own timing.
4. When ticked, the workflow honors your hours. If a record triggers the workflow outside those hours, the actions are not lost — see Section 6. The hint under the option states this directly.
Tip: If you cannot find the Use business hours option, check two things: the workflow's trigger is not set to Time Interval, and Business Hours are Enabled in Settings → Company Details.
6. What "Deferred to the Next Opening" Means
This is the most important behavior to understand.
When a workflow has Use business hours ticked and a record triggers it outside your business hours, the workflow's actions (for example, sending an email or updating a field) are not dropped and not run at that odd hour. Instead they are deferred — held — and run automatically at your next opening time.
For example, with hours of Monday–Friday 9:00 AM–5:00 PM:
A record changes at 8:00 PM on Tuesday → the workflow's actions wait and run at 9:00 AM on Wednesday.
A record changes at 10:00 AM on Tuesday (within hours) → the workflow runs immediately. Nothing is lost — the work simply waits for your business to be open.
7. Frequently Asked Questions
Q: I enabled Business Hours but nothing changed — why? Enabling Business Hours at the organization level is only half of it. Each workflow must also have Use business hours ticked (Section 5). A workflow without that option ticked keeps running at any time.
Q: How do I turn the feature off again? In Settings → Company Details, set Business Hours to Disabled and save. Automation immediately goes back to running at any time. Your saved schedule is kept in case you turn it on again later.
Q: Will this change how my existing workflows behave? No — not until you opt in. Business Hours are off by default, and the per-workflow option is off by default.
Existing workflows keep running exactly as before until an administrator both enables Business Hours and ticks the option on a specific workflow.
Q: What happens to a deferred action if the record is deleted before the opening? Deferred actions run at the next opening only while the record still exists. If the record is gone, the action does not run.
Q: Does this affect scheduled ("Time Interval") workflows? No. Those workflows manage their own timing, so the Use business hours option is hidden for them.
Q: My open/close times look off by a few hours. Check the Timezone field in Company Details — your hours are interpreted in that timezone. Setting the wrong timezone is the most common cause of times appearing shifted.
Need Help?
If something does not behave as described:
1. Confirm Business Hours is Enabled and the Timezone is correct in Settings → Company Details.
2. Confirm the specific workflow has Use business hours ticked and is not a Time Interval workflow.
3. Contact Dazos support with the workflow name and the time the record was changed, and reference CRM-3251.