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How to use office hours in reporting

Written by Ivan Branimir Skoric

Depending on your requirements, you can choose to calculate time-based metrics (e.g. first response time, subsequent response, time to close) in one of two ways:

  • All hours (24/7): Metrics do not take your office hours into consideration.

  • Within office hours: Metrics are calculated based on your default office hours (or custom office hours if a team inbox has custom hours set, or a per-teammate schedule if one has been assigned — see Teammate schedules below).


Using office hours in report templates and custom reports

In Intercom's new report templates and custom reports, you can control whether office hours are included in metric calculations at the individual chart level.

A "Within office hours" option is available for the following metrics:

Conversation metrics

  • First Response Time

  • Response Time

  • Time from First Assignment to Close

  • Time to Close

Teammate metrics

  • Teammate First Response Time

  • Teammate Subsequent Response Time

  • Teammate Time to Close

  • Teammate Handling Time

Team metrics

  • Team First Response Time

  • Team Subsequent Response Time

  • Team Time to Close

Custom office hours are only used for team metrics. If a team inbox doesn't have custom office hours, your default office hours will be used.

Enabling office hours in your reports

By default, any pre-built template will calculate metrics based on All hours. You can choose to calculate metrics Within office hours when adding a metric from the chart library using the dropdown.

The chart metric picker in a report template showing a Within office hours option in the dropdown for a time-based metric, used to enable office hours calculation

Tip: If your report has a chart which doesn't use office hours, you can delete the chart and then add a new chart which does use office hours as described above.

If you have access to custom reports, you can create or edit an existing chart and select the checkbox below the metric to calculate it Within office hours, then click Update chart.

The chart builder in a custom report showing a time-based metric selected with the Within office hours checkbox checked below the metric dropdown

This means you can have some metrics in your report which are calculated within office hours, and others that include all hours if you want to compare them.


Teammate schedules

You can assign individual schedules to teammates so that time-based metrics reflect each person's actual working hours, rather than your workspace default.

Note: Per-teammate schedules are available on plans that include Custom Reports, and are supported in US, EU, and AU data residency regions.

How schedule resolution works

When "Within office hours" is selected for a teammate metric, the first matching schedule is applied in this order:

  1. The teammate's own schedule (if one has been assigned)

  2. The team's custom office hours (if the teammate's team has custom hours set)

  3. Your workspace default office hours

The “Effective schedule” column in Settings > Office hours > Teammate schedules shows which schedule will apply to each teammate based on their current assignments.

The Settings > Office hours > Teammate schedules page showing the Effective schedule column, which displays the office hours schedule that will apply to each teammate for reporting metric calculations

Note: Teammates on more than one team have no single team schedule to inherit. The roster flags these teammates so you can assign them an explicit schedule directly.

Assigning teammate schedules

You can assign schedules to individual teammates or in bulk from Settings > Office hours > Teammate schedules in the "Reporting schedule" column. This is an assignment surface so you reuse the office-hours schedules you've already set up.

The Settings > Office hours > Teammate schedules page showing the Reporting schedule column where individual office hours schedules can be assigned to teammates in bulk or individually

Assignment is optional - any teammate without an explicit schedule automatically falls back to their team's schedule, then the workspace default, so you can start with just the teammates whose reporting needs correcting.

Note:

  • Teammate schedules affect Reporting metrics only. They have no impact on Messenger away mode, SLA timers, snooze, auto-reply, or workflow office-hours branches.

  • Per-teammate schedules only apply to data going forward. Historical conversation metrics are not recalculated when a schedule is assigned or changed.

  • The headline First response time metric on the Conversations dataset is not affected by per-teammate schedules — it continues to use the workspace default. This metric measures the first reply to a conversation regardless of who sent it, so an individual teammate's schedule doesn't apply to it. If you expect this number to change after assigning teammate schedules, it won't. Use Teammate first response time on the Conversation actions dataset to measure per-teammate responsiveness against the correct schedule.


Using office hours in Intercom's legacy reports

In Intercom's legacy pre-built reports, the inclusion of office hours in metrics is controlled by your default office hours which are configured in Settings > Workspace > Office hours.

This toggle allows you to "Track team response metrics within office hours only".

The legacy reports office hours settings page in Settings > Workspace > Office hours showing the toggle for Track team response metrics within office hours only

Note: This setting impacts all time-based metrics in legacy report charts.


How office hours affect your metrics

Here are some practical examples to illustrate how office hours affect various metrics.

Metric Group

Metrics

Office Hours checkbox

How it works

Conversation Metrics

  • First Response Time

  • Response Time

  • Time from first assignment to close

  • Time to Close

☑️ Checked

Uses default office hours

When "within office hours" is selected for these metrics, your default office hours will be used, resulting in the exclusion of any time spent outside of these hours from the calculations.

For example, consider a workspace with default office hours set from Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm. If a customer initiates a conversation on Monday at 8 am, and the conversation gets assigned to Team A at 10 am, with the first response provided by a team member at 10:15 am, the first response time for this metric will be calculated as 1 hour and 15 minutes. This calculation excludes the hour from 8 am to 9 am, as it falls outside the customer's Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm default office hours.

Conversation Metrics

  • First Response Time

  • Response Time

  • Time from first assignment to close

  • Time to Close

🔲 Unchecked

Uses all hours

When "All hours" is selected for these metrics, it means that the default office hours will not be considered for exclusion, and all time data will be used for the calculations, regardless of whether it falls within or outside of your office hours.

For example, consider a workspace with default office hours set from Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm. If a customer initiates a conversation on Monday at 8 am, and the conversation gets assigned to Team A at 10 am, with the first response provided by a team member at 10:15 am, the first response time for this metric will be calculated as 2 hour and 15 minutes, including the time from 8 am to 9 am.

Teammate Metrics

  • Teammate First Response Time

  • Teammate Subsequent Response Time

  • Teammate Time to close

  • Teammate handling time

☑️ Checked

Uses teammate schedule

When "within office hours" is selected for these metrics, Intercom applies the first matching schedule in this order: the teammate's own schedule (if assigned), the team's custom office hours (if set), or your workspace default. This ensures each teammate's response time reflects their actual working hours.

For example, consider a workspace with default office hours from Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm, but Teammate A has a personal schedule set from Monday to Friday, 8 am to 4 pm. If a customer starts a conversation at 7:30 am and Teammate A responds at 8:15 am, the first response time is calculated as 15 minutes — using Teammate A's schedule, not the workspace default.

Teammate Metrics

  • Teammate First Response Time

  • Teammate Subsequent Response Time

  • Teammate Time to close

  • Teammate handling time

🔲 Unchecked

Uses all hours

When "All hours" is selected for these metrics, it means that the default office hours setting will not be considered for exclusion, and all time data will be used for the calculations, regardless of whether it falls within or outside your office hours.

For example, consider a workspace with default office hours set from Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm. If a customer initiates a conversation on Monday at 8 am, and the conversation gets assigned to a teammate at 8:30 am, with the first response provided by the teammate at 10:30am, the first response time for this metric will be calculated as 2 hours.

Note:

When "within office hours" is selected, if a customer starts a conversation outside office hours and a teammate replies outside office hours, the response time is ignored and does not impact your report metrics.

  • Example:

    • Customer starts a conversation at 7 AM.

    • Teammate replies at 8 AM, but office hours start at 9 AM.

    • The response time is ignored and does not impact your average or median response time.

First response time is calculated based on the office hours in effect at the time of the teammate’s reply, not when the conversation started.

  • Example:

    • If office hours are changed before a teammate replies, the new office hours will be used to calculate the first response time.


Troubleshooting

I changed my office hours and my past data changed or disappeared

Response-time metrics use the schedule that was in effect at the time each reply was sent. Changing your office hours only affects data going forward — past conversations keep their original calculated values. After switching to a narrower schedule (for example, removing weekends), conversations that previously had data outside those hours will show no value for the within-office-hours metric, so a period that used to show data may appear emptier.

My first response time doesn't match the time between the message and the reply

Within-office-hours metrics only count time inside your configured hours, so they're almost always smaller than the raw elapsed time. Two settings commonly narrow the hours more than expected: a 'Weekdays' schedule overrides any per-day configuration, and your default (workspace) schedule may cover fewer hours than you assume. Team inboxes use their own custom hours only if configured — otherwise the workspace default applies. To check the exact hours in use, go to Settings > Office hours.

A metric shows blank, or 0s — is data missing?

Neither indicates lost data. A response sent entirely outside office hours has no countable in-hours duration, so it shows as blank in CSV exports and is excluded from averages. If the in-hours duration works out to zero (for example, the reply was sent exactly at the boundary of office hours), it can show as 0s in a chart. Both are expected behavior.

First response time is very long, or didn't start when Fin handed off to a human

First response time measures from the customer's first message to the first human reply — not from when a bot or Fin escalated. Any time the conversation waited before a human replied (within office hours) is included. The 'bot inbox excluded' variant removes only the time the conversation spent in the Bot Inbox (where conversations wait while an automated bot or Fin AI handles them before a human teammate takes over). A duration of '1 day' in reports means 24 hours of in-hours time, not a calendar day.

First response time equals time to close — that can't be right

The two metrics are calculated independently and can occasionally produce the same value — for example, a conversation that was answered and immediately closed in a single action within office hours. An equal value is a coincidence, not a sign the metrics are linked or mis-configured.


💡Tip

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