3.1 - Setting up agents and queues, a schedule and a calendar

This article provides a comprehensive overview of refining your call flow in babelforce. From a brief recap on setting up agents and queues to the intricacies of establishing business hours and calendars, we aim to cover every step in detail. By the end, you'll have a clear understanding of how to harness both foundational and advanced features to create a smooth and efficient call-handling system tailored to your needs.

Recap: Agents and Queues

Agents: Begin by creating a new agent. Agents are associated with the group _all by default. Alternatively, create a new group depending on your preference.
Queues: Navigate to the 'queue' section. Choose between utilizing the a queue you created previously or creating a new one. Ensure that you link the agent to the chosen queue. It's vital to remember your queue of choice when setting up the call flow.

The difference between Business Hours and Calendars

For efficient management, it's crucial to have clear operational timings. babelforce provides two tools for this - 'business hours' and 'calendars':

Business Hours: Dictates the regular opening and closing times for a typical week.
Calendars: Used for setting exceptions like holidays or special events. Calendars can auto-adjust, eliminating the need for manual intervention post-event.

Configuring Business Hours

Access
```
Scheduling > Business Hours
```
You can adjust an existing schedule or start anew by clicking the 'Add' button.
Assign a descriptive name, choose the correct timezone (this ensures calls align with your real-time operational hours), and input the daily operational hours.
Confirm with 'Save'.

A detailed video guide is available if you prefer a visual walkthrough.

Within the list of available business hours, each entry displays its timezone and current availability status. For instance, 'Shop DE' is marked as "Inactive", whereas "Business hours agata" is "Active."

For a quick overview of specific opening times, simply click on the magnifying glass icon adjacent to each entry.

Setting Up Calendars

Proceed to
```
Scheduling > Calendar
```
For a new calendar, press 'Add', give it a relevant title, and set its timezone.
To embed specific non-operational dates (like holidays), choose 'Add' in the date overview. Define the start and end of the non-operational date.

For those who benefit from a visual guide, an illustrative video tutorial is provided.

Linking Business Hours & Calendar to Your Call Flow

Though essential, business hours and calendars in itself will have no impact your call flow. They are independent objects within the manager that have to be integrated into specific call flow modules, which is achieved with triggers and switches.

We'll delve deeper into creating and using triggers in section 3.3 and the concept of switches in section 3.4.

The following section will guide you through uploading custom audio files to the babelforce platform.