Date & Time (business hours)

Getting here

Automate → Workflows, open a workflow, click + on the canvas, then pick Date & Time (business hours) under Add Steps.

Before you start

• An owner, admin or agent can add this step and save the workflow. Publishing it is an owner or admin action.
• Building and running workflows depends on your plan; see pricing.
• Nothing outside Inchat has to be connected. Using the workspace's shared business hours needs them set once in Settings → General.

Set up

1. Open the workflow and click + where the check belongs.
2. Pick Date & Time (business hours).
3. Under Check, choose Business hours or Date range.
4. For Business hours: tick Use the workspace business hours to share the hours set in Settings → General, or untick it and set this step's own hours per day and a Time zone.
5. For Date range: set a Start and an End.
6. Choose is within or is not within to decide which side counts as passing.
7. Add at least one step to the Open path; the Closed path may be left empty.
8. Save the step, then publish the workflow.

Fields

Check

Whether the step tests business hours or a fixed date range.

Use the workspace business hours

Shares the hours set once in Settings → General, so every step using it moves together when those hours change.

Limits: Untick it to give this step its own hours and time zone instead.

Time zone

The IANA time zone the check runs in.

Default: Asia/Kuala_Lumpur

Start / End

The date range being checked, in Date range mode.

Limits: Both are required together, and saving through this step's own drawer refuses an End set before Start. A workflow built by the AI Workflow Builder is not protected by that same check — see Limits.

Match

is within treats the range or hours as the passing case; is not within treats being outside them as passing.

How it works

• The check runs the instant the step is reached — it does not wait or poll, it evaluates once and immediately continues down the Open path (the check passed) or the Closed path (it did not).
• A step using the workspace's shared hours reads them live from Settings → General the first time it is needed, then reuses that same reading for the rest of that uninterrupted run — so an edit to the workspace's hours does not change an answer already read earlier in the same, still-running pass. A run that suspends at a Wait and later resumes reads the hours fresh again on resume, since the resumed continuation is its own fresh pass.
• After either path finishes, the run continues to whatever comes after the Date & Time step on the canvas — an empty Closed path does not end the workflow, it simply has nothing extra to do before falling through.
• If the check itself cannot be evaluated (for example, corrupted hours data), it is treated as Closed rather than stopping the run.

When it fails

• The step itself does not fail in the sense of an error shown to the operator — every run of it records as succeeded, having taken either the Open or the Closed path.
• Saving through the drawer is refused without a time zone, without at least one action on the Open path, with a date range missing one end, or with an End before Start.

Limits

• It never suspends the run to wait for hours to open — it is a same-instant check, not a hold. Use Wait with its own "only continue during business hours" option to actually delay a message until the workspace opens.
• A step sharing the workspace's hours can answer differently within the same uninterrupted run than a fresh run started moments later, right after a Settings → General edit — the running one keeps its first reading only until that run next suspends at a Wait; the resumed continuation reads the hours fresh again, same as a brand-new run.
• There is no workspace-wide "exit conditions" toggle that this step interacts with — business hours here is purely what this one step (or the workspace hours it optionally shares) checks, not a global auto-stop.
• The drawer's own End-before-Start check is not repeated at every layer: a date range built by the AI Workflow Builder can save with an End before Start. That is not an error at run time either — the range simply never matches (the step always takes Closed, or always Open under is not within), rather than failing or warning anyone.

Best practices

• Use this step to route a reply differently inside and outside business hours; use a Wait step's own business-hours hold when the goal is instead to delay a customer message until the workspace opens.
• Share the workspace's hours unless this particular check genuinely needs its own — a step with its own hours is easy to forget when the workspace's real hours change.

Use cases

• Outside business hours, the Closed path sends a message saying when the team is back; inside them, the Open path assigns the conversation to whoever is free.
• A promotion only applies during a fixed date range; the step checks is within that range before applying a tag.

FAQ and troubleshooting

Does an empty Closed path stop the workflow?

No. With nothing on the Closed path, the run simply falls through to whatever comes after the Date & Time step — it does not end there.

If I change the workspace's business hours mid-run, does an in-progress run see the change?

Not until that run next suspends. A run that already read the workspace's hours keeps that reading for the rest of its current, uninterrupted pass; a run that suspends at a Wait and later resumes reads the hours fresh again on resume, same as a brand-new run.

Related

• Wait — Pause the run for a set duration or until a time of day, optionally held to business hours or to a daily window so a customer is never messaged in the middle of the night.
• Condition — Split the run into up to twelve lanes plus a None lane, checked top to bottom — the first lane whose conditions all pass wins, and Condition tests one field against one value at a time.
• Workflows: how a flow runs — A workflow is one trigger, optional conditions and an ordered list of steps; only a published workflow runs, and this article explains how a run starts, forks, pauses, fails and stops.