Distributor Hours

Distributor hours let you control when a distributor assigns records, so your team doesn't contact leads outside their working hours. Set a weekly contact window for each distributor, using either a fixed time zone or a time zone stored on each record.

Available from Distribution Engine 22.5.

Distributor hours apply to Standard, Trigger and Pull distributors. Manual distributors are excluded. The distributor types you can use depend on your subscription.

How Distributor Hours Work

Team hours remain the default for team members, and a member's individual hours or assigned shift still override them. Distributor hours add one more check: the record must be within the distributor's hours, and the team member must be available under the rules that apply to them.

For example, a team works 09:00-17:00, a member has individual hours of 12:00-20:00, and a distributor is open 16:00-19:00. That member can receive assignments through that distributor from 16:00-19:00, subject to their other availability and routing settings. All times in this example use the same time zone.

Distributor hours do not change a member's availability calendar, out-of-office entries, holidays, caps, or SLA working-time calculations.

Set Up Distributor Hours

On the Distribution Teams tab, select the team, then open Distribution hours from the left navigation
Select the Distributor hours tab and click the distributor name
Toggle the days you would like the distributor to be available and set the available times. Each available day can have up to three non-overlapping blocks, so use separate blocks for breaks. Copy to all updates the other available days, but does not toggle unavailable days to available
Under Time zone options, select Time zone and choose a zone in Choose time zone, or select Dynamic time zone and choose the Record field. See below for more details on dynamic time zones.
Click Save, then check the row's Status

Saving hours does not automatically switch Distributor Hours On . Toggle the status to On, for your desired distributor, when you are ready to apply the hours check.
If a distributor has no saved hours, toggling the status opens the editor first. Save the configuration, then toggle the status to On.
Turning hours Off keeps the saved schedule and time zone settings for later reuse.

Use existing configuration

To save time, use Use existing configuration to start from one of these:

Template - Monday to Friday 09:00-17:00, or 24 x 7
Current team hours - Copies the weekly time blocks only. Check your time zone selection separately
Another distributor in this team - Copies its hours and its fixed or dynamic time zone settings from a specified distributor on the team

Copies are snapshots, so later changes to the original distributor hours do not update the newly configured distributor.
Copying also leaves this distributor's On or Off status unchanged. The selector does not link a distributor to a Shift Planner shift.

Turn Hours On or Off In Bulk

Select the distributors using the row checkboxes, then choose Turn hours on or Turn hours off under Bulk activity
Configure every selected distributor before turning hours on
Changing the search or filters clears the selection, so reselect the visible rows before applying a bulk action

Time zone options

Fixed time zone

All records are checked against the one time zone you choose.

Dynamic time zone

Each record supplies its own time zone, and the same weekly schedule is evaluated in that time zone.

For example, hours of 09:00-17:00 use London local time for a record containing Europe/London, and New York local time for a record containing America/New_York.

The field you choose must:

Be directly on the object being distributed
Be filterable
Be a Text field, a single-select Picklist, or a Formula returning Text

A related-field path cannot be selected directly, but an eligible Formula (Text) field on the distributed object can expose a related value.

See Salesforce Supported Time Zones for the full list of supported time zones.

Store the Salesforce time zone ID as the field value, for example Europe/London, America/New_York or America/Los_Angeles.
Use the value in parenthesis representing the Area/Location.
Do not use the full Salesforce Time Zone Name.
For a picklist, use the time zone ID as the picklist API value.

Distribution Engine does not infer or populate the time zone from the record's address.
A record with a blank or unrecognized time zone is skipped by this distributor, and there is no fallback to a fixed time zone.

Distributor hours only restrict the distributor on which they are enabled. A record skipped by one distributor can still be assigned by another matching distributor or team. If a record must wait until a particular window, configure every alternative route so it cannot pick up that record outside the intended hours.