Timeplans

The standard bot skills work with the opening hours that are managed in the Bot settings section, see opening hours.

However, sometimes more flexibility is required. For this the Timeplan skill can be used. It allows users to define one or more alternative timeplans, for instance to allow for Lunch time.

The skill will set a predefined tag when the current time fall within the defined day and time. Using the tag you can define conditions in flow nodes, for instance to skip over a node or to branch.

Installing the Timeplans skill

The Timeplans skill isn't installed automatically with your template. Therefore you need to install it by request.

Ask the DialoX team to install it for you.

What is a timeplan

A timeplan is a scheduled event that can overwrite your online or offline status set by the default Opening hours settings and even set an additional tag so you can define specific behaviour in your flow that needs to happen when this scheduled event occurs.

A timeplan can trigger weekly, yearly, at one single date and time, or for a period. Examples:

• use a yearly timeplan to schedule Christmas closing

• use a weekly timeplan to schedule daily lunch time closing

• use a one time timeplan to schedule closing due to a company offsite or event

• use a period timeplan to schedule closing for non-repeating holidays

Adding a timeplan

The skill adds a page to manage your timeplans in the Settings section.

1. Go to settings and click Timeplans.

1. Click Add to add a new timeplan.

This will add a new line:

1. Click on the newly created line to unfold the form

1. Now provide a description (for you to keep track of the different timeplans)

2. Select what kind of Timeplan it is: One time, Yearly or Weekly.

3. Choose the "Set system status" to be nothing when your timeplan doesn't affect the online or offline status of your bot, otherwise choose online or offline when it does impact the status.

4. Choose to add a specific tag which then can be used in your flow to make specific logic based on this tag, for instance when you want to say to the user "We are currently having lunch" or something.

5. Now, dependent on what kind of Timeplan you selected you can fill in the details (see examples below for more information):

   1. Weekly: days of the week followed by a from and until time

   2. Yearly: month, day and a from and until time

   3. One time: date and a from and until time

Fields

Property	Description	Explanation
Description	A human readable description	For you to keep track of your timeplans. It has no utilitarian purpuse.
Kind	What type of timeplan? Weekly, Yearly or One time	This has effect on what date and time details are asked below
Set system status	Does your timeplan affect the online or offline status of your bot?	Choose online when it should set the status to online. Set offline when it should set the status to offline and leave empty if it doesn't impact the status.
Add tag	Sets a specific tag when this Timeplan is active.	This helps you to define specific logic in your flows for this Timeplan, for instance a special text that explains the company is heaving lunch.
Office hours	Define a time period per week day	Only visible when Kind is configured with "Weekly"
Month and day	Define the month and day at which this Timeplan should be active on a yearly basis	Only visible when Kind is configured with "Yearly". Notice that when 29/2 is selected for example, the system will automatically fallback to 28/2
Date	Define the exact date at which this timeplan becomes active	Only when Kind is configured as "One time"
From	Define the exact time at which this timeplan becomes active on the given day
Until	Define the exact time until this timeplan is active on the given day

Examples

One time: Beach day

A one time Timeplan that sets the general status to offline and even adds a tag to indicate there is a beach day going on that day.

Yearly: Christmas

A yearly timeplan to manage Christmas day as a closed day can be configured as following:

Weekly: Lunch break

A weekly recurring schedule to manage a closed situation due to lunch can be configured as such:

Period: Spring break

When you're closed for a couple of days, e.g. during spring break, you can configure an offline situation as follows:

Note that the "Until" date is inclusive. In the example above, that would mean that on the 25th of april, the system status would be offline.

Timeplan tags

The tags you can add as part of a timeplan need to be part of the Timeplan group. This group is automatically added to your bot Tags at install of the Timeplans skill. This way, whenever you add a tag in your timeplan, it will group it as a Timeplan tag:

So simply type the name of your tag and click on the "+ Create tag…" button that appears to create the tag inside the tag group "timeplan".

Read more about tags here.

The skill will set a predefined tag when the current time fall within the defined day and time. Using the tag you can define conditions in flow nodes, for instance to skip over a node or to branch.

Use Timeplan accordingly

To create a well-functioning time plan, you must ensure that your time plan comes before all other system tags. For instance, if you have the online and offline situations, you must put your timeplan on the left side of these statuses. This way the system knows that it must execute the time plan on that specific day and will overwrite the other statuses.