Managing Opening Hours Calendars

Stratus uses an internal calendar to determine whether or not an activated team (service) is publicly shown available under its SIP Address. Team calendars give you added flexibility as individual team members can remain available in their Microsoft Teams IM client without getting any service calls directed at them. Also see → Your Team Choice for related information on team status and Opening Hours dependencies. The same rules for Stratus User Roles also apply here:

• Tenant admins can manage the calendars for all services under their tenant.  
• Team admins may only access and individualize these calendars, but not edit their assignment or add own entries.

To access the calendar functionality, log into Stratus, open the sidebar and click on "Opening Hours" 

Add new Opening Hours

To start a new Opening Hours entry ...

1. Click on "Add New" 
   → An "Opening Hours Details" Tab is opened on the right side

2. Start by giving the entry a Name that will later serve others for identification (e.g. "Callcenter Opening Hours")

3. You have to specify an Organization Unit (Tenant) under which this Opening Hours entry is made available.
    Team admins under that OU may then see and adapt this entry to their needs.
   

   

   Managing Opening Hours Calendars

4. The "Default Value" determines the outbound facing state of your Service if no other event has been defined in your calendar to override this. 
    
   
   

5. Configure a timezone which should fit the target location where the assigned Service (OU) is situated. The zone is always defined as UTC (Universal Time Coordinated). 
   
6. You can now either "Save" the Calendar as empty template or continue with the next steps.

Tips and Learnings

• When defined, events always take precedence over the default value.
• We recommend that "Closed" is selected as a default for your first Opening Hours calendar, so you can define the opening times individually (as an "opt-in" approach).

 Tip: You can also create an empty "Default Closed" calendar entry for your main tenant, so services can be quickly closed down completely when needed.

Instruction Video

Here is a short video on managing opening hours and calendar entries:

Opening Hours Priority

Add Calendar Entry 

In this case we assume that an empty Calendar with a Default Value "Closed" has been created. We'll add standard Monday to Friday Opening hours with a few special cases included. First we'll open up the service at a recurring time. 

1. Double click the starting time where your service should be available for the first time forward. 
   → An "Event" dialogue will open, allowing you to configure the event, starting from the time where you have chosen previously
   

   

   
   

   1. Fill in the "Name" as you like. Define the type as "Open"

   2. Set the "Type" to "Open".  Learn more about event types in the Infobox below these steps.
   3. Adjust the "Timezone" to what your service will use. Default is already the Timezone that you picked earlier in Step 5. 
   4. Set the "Start" and "End" to a time within the same day as you'd like to have it repeated on your normal working days.
   5. Set "Repeat" to weekly → The options below will change. 
   6. Select the Weekdays in the "Repeat On" section, e.g. Mo-Fr.
   7. Set the "End" to "Never" and "Save" your entry.
      → A recurring event is added to the Calendar, signaled by an icon at the top left of the event item.
      → Your new Opening Hours calendar is also added to the list on the left panel.

Special cases like "FlexibleTime" and "Special 1-4" can be used to define exceptions. In most usage scenarios they are not needed. If you require special opening scenarios (e.g. for your reporting and routing), get in contact with us to define specific workflows during initial configuration of Stratus.
Tenant admins can then make use of these special rules when assigning their workflows.

To avoid ambiguity problems with workflows, states and call distribution settings, we strongly suggest not to "stack" events parallel next to each other. Ideally all events in your calendar are set back to back to allow seamless transition of states (or transitions back into the default value).

Special Cases, Holidays and Breaks

As your base opening hours are now defined, it's time to add some specialties. As you learned in the previous steps, you can just double click into an empty space within the calendar to create another entry.

1. Create a new Event called "Holiday"
2. As type, select "Local Holiday"
3. Check "All Day Event"
4. Optionally you can set "Repeat" on "Yearly" 
5. Save the Event

 Note that you don't need to define every little break. For example, break can be easily defined by having gaps between your "Opening Hours" blocks.

Edit Occurrence

During holiday seasons you will most likely not have normal opening hours, so exceptions from the recurrence should be added:

1. Double click on any recurring "Open" Event already existing in your Calendar
   → A dialogue "Edit Recurring Item" will open
2. Select "Edit Current Occurrence" from the options available
3. Make changes as needed.
    Note that the "Repeat" entry has automatically shifted to "Never" as it's now a single time event.
4. Save your entry when done

 To delete single items out of occurrences, it's best to edit and convert the item to be deleted to convert it to a single instance, then delete it.

Save and Discard Calendars

Once you are happy with your calendar, you can use the top menu buttons to "Save" or "Discard" changes.

 Only tenant administrators are allowed to "Remove" a whole Opening Hours calendar entry. Team admins only have "Save" and "Discard" of changes as available options.