Configuring Business Hours & Shifts

Note: The Business Hours and Shifts feature is currently in its beta stage, with several additional components planned in the product roadmap. Contact support@zohoiot.com for more details.

Business Hours in Zoho IoT are used to define an organization’s set of working hours. This allows easy generation of working-hour-based reports, widgets, and KPI datapoints.

Shifts provide a more granular division within the business hours such as morning, evening, or night shifts enabling the system to record and evaluate performance metrics, events, and alerts for each specific operational period.

Sample: Shift based report for energy delivered.

Note: When business hours is configured for an application, all visualizations will be based on the set of data fetched for the business hour.

Features Using Business Hours/Shifts

The below points outline the various features in Zoho IoT where Business Hours and Shifts can be utilized.

Reports

You can apply business hours/shifts to reports to show only the data recorded during working hours. (e.g., daily energy usage from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.).

Dashboards & Widgets

You can use business hours/shifts in widgets to display metrics automatically, such as machine uptime or occupancy, only during operating hours.

KPI Datapoints

You can link business hours/shifts to KPI datapoints to calculate metrics like total production or power consumption during business hours of a particular day/week/time period.

Configuring Business Hours

Depending on your organization's work schedule, you can configure the business hours in the application. If your organization adheres to distinct timings on specific days or operates during weekends, you can configure the business hours to align with your specific needs.

To configure business hours:

Access the End Application.
Click on the Setup icon to display the setup options page.
Click General, and Application Settings in the left pane.
Click the Business Hours tab.
Click Add Business Hours.

Note: We can configure business hours across days for 24 hours. e.g. 8 a.m. to next day 8 a.m.
Select the week start day in the Week Starts On drop down list.
Select the Days and the Time Range as desired.
Click Add.

Image: Configured Business Hours

Note: When editing business hours, the changes should take effect from the configured date onward. Currently, any modification to the time applies retroactively to previous data as well.

Configuring Shifts

Shifts are used in Zoho IoT to define multiple sets of working hours within a day in an organization. When creating, shifts are created within shift groups. Users can be allocated to any of these shifts.

Note: You can configure up to 4 shifts in a business hour.

To configure a shift,

Access the End Application.
Click on the Setup icon to display the setup options page.
Click General and Application Settings in the left pane.
Click the Shifts tab.
Click Add Shifts.
Provide the Shift Group Name.
Provide the individual shift name, and configure the day of the week and timing for the shift.
Click on the + icon to configure more individual shifts within the group.
Click Save.

Note:

The shift hours must be inside the selected business hour.
Maximum of 4 shifts can be created in a business hour.
Maximum of 2 break hours can be created in a shift.

Image: Configured Shifts

How Business Hour/ Shifts Influences Other IoT Functions

Business Hours/Shift options are used in various features of the application for multiple purposes such as generating specific time based reports, widgets, and calculating for KPI Data points for business hours and shifts.

Sample use cases

1. Reports Generation

Business Hours and Shifts allow you to generate reports aligned with your organization’s operating timelines. During report creation or modification, you can select the appropriate Business Hours or Shifts to ensure accurate calculations, such as energy consumed during a specific shift or working period.

In reports, there are two ways in which you can view data.

Filtered View

To filter and view data based on a period.

Grouping

To group and view data. For example, to display the energy consumption in a shift. The grouping option is available only for instance property reports.

2. Widget Creation

While creating or modifying widgets, you can select Business Hours or Shifts as the data range to align the displayed information with your organization’s working schedules. This ensures that the widget reflects accurate, shift-specific insights such as energy usage, performance, or events based on the configured Business Hours or Shifts, rather than general time periods.

3. KPI Data Points Calculation

Instances of Business Hour utilization also apply to Key Performance Indicator (KPI) datapoints, where metrics are calculated specifically within the defined business hours. For example, you can measure energy consumption at the end of a business hour for a given day, week, or selected time period, ensuring that the KPI values reflect only the organization’s active working hours.

in a manufacturing unit, you can calculate the part produced at the end of a particular shift on selected days by configuring a KPI data point with schedule and shifts option.

Ensure you select the Scheduled KPI Datapoint, and the Schedule option for Execute Interval.

2. Select End of Business Day or End of Shifts to select the day or shifts after which the value has to be calculated and stored for the data point.

3. Click Add.

Image: Current Shift selected to calculate metrics for the shift.

Note: When Shifts are enabled in the KPI Datapoint, the Shift option can be selected when configuring the datapoint.

Note: In the case of a KPI Datapoint, if an existing KPI is configured with a time range of 8:00 a.m. to next day 8:00 a.m. and is currently in use (Monday). And then you configure a new time range of 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m for the next day (Tuesday).

The system will calculate and display KPI data for that day based on the new 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m schedule.

However, for the previous days, the KPI data calculated using the earlier 8:00 a.m. to next day 8:00 a.m. configuration will remain unchanged, as it was already computed.