# How to Set Up Working Hours
Working hours on DoubleTick let you define when your team is available to handle customer conversations. You can **set these hours at the organization level so they apply to your entire team, or you can create custom working hour configurations for individual teams that operate on different schedules.**
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#### **Understanding the Two Types of Working Hours**
DoubleTick gives you two ways to manage working hours.
The first is **Organization Working Hours**. This is a **single working hour configuration that applies to your entire organization**. It is the right choice if all your teams follow the same schedule.
The second is **Custom Working Hours**. This allows you to **create separate working hour configurations and assign them to specific teams**. If a team does not have its own custom working hours assigned, it will automatically inherit the working hours from its parent team, based on your team hierarchy. This is the right choice if different teams in your organization operate across different regions or time zones.
***
#### **Setting Up Organization Working Hours**
To get started, go to the Working Hours section in your DoubleTick settings and click on Organization Working Hours.
**Selecting Your Time Zone**
The first step is to **select the time zone** for your organization. This ensures that the working hours you set are correctly mapped to your local time.
**Adding Daily Working Hours**
Once your time zone is selected, you can **add working hours for each day of the week individually**. For each day, you will enter a start time and an end time. For example, you might set Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. You will need to add the hours for each day separately.
**Adding Hours for Special Days**
If your team works on certain special days that fall outside your regular schedule, you can account for those here. Click on **Add Hours, select the specific date, and enter the start and end time** for that day.
**Auto-Assigning Chats to Team Members**
DoubleTick can automatically assign incoming chats to team members who are within their working hours. To enable this, **toggle the auto-assign option to the right**. A dropdown will appear where you can **select the team members you want chats to be assigned to**.
**Setting Up Holidays**
The Organization Working Hours section also includes a Set Up Holidays option. Here you can add your organization's monthly or annual holidays so that DoubleTick knows when your team is not available.
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#### **Setting Up Custom Working Hours**
If **different teams in your organization work different hours, Custom Working Hours is the right approach**. A good example is a company that has teams serving the APAC, EMEA, and North America regions. Each of these teams would operate in a different time zone with different availability windows, so a single organization-level schedule would not work for them.
To create a custom working hour configuration, go to Working Hours in your settings and select Custom Working Hours. Click on Add New to begin.
**Creating a Configuration**
Start by entering a name for this Team so you can identify it easily later. Then select teams to apply these working hours. From there, the setup process follows the same steps as Organization Working Hours: **select the time zone, add working hours for each day, add hours for any special days, and configure the chat auto-assign toggle if you want incoming chats distributed automatically among the team members.**
Once everything is set, click **Save** Working Hours. You can repeat this process to create separate configurations for as many teams as you need.
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#### **Configuring Away Messages**
Away messages are the automated responses that DoubleTick sends to customers who reach out during non-working hours. To set this up, **Toggle the Away Messages option to enable it, update the message text if needed, and save.** Make sure the away message is enabled so that customers receive a response when your team is offline.
**Setting Away Messages for Holidays**
Just as you set up holidays in your working hours configuration, you can also set a dedicated away message for those holidays. **Toggle the holiday away message option to enable it, update the message text if needed, and save.** This ensures customers are informed even on days when your team is not working at all.
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#### **A Quick Summary**
Use Organization Working Hours if your entire team works the same schedule. Use Custom Working Hours if different teams operate on different schedules or across different regions. In either case, DoubleTick will use these configurations to determine how bots behave and when chats are auto-assigned. Away messages take care of customer communication during the hours your team is unavailable.
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