Starting January 2026, the SLA calculation in Freshdesk, when configured in “days” in business hours (screenshot below), will be updated for ease of use. This article outlines the upcoming changes and how you can ensure the change does not impact your account. This change will be rolled out in phases.
This article contains the following sections:
- Setting SLA targets in days in business hours: how it currently works
- Limitations of the current setup
- What’s changing
- What should you do?
- Scenario 1: When you have uniform Business hours
- Scenario 2: When you have different Business hours for different groups
- FAQs
Setting SLA targets in days in business hours: how it currently works
Let’s take the following example
Business hours: 9 AM to 5 PM (Mon–Fri)
SLA (First response time): 1 day with operational hours in business hours
Case 1: Ticket created at: Monday 8 AM → Due by: Monday 5 PM (Same day)
Case 2: Ticket created at: Friday 6 PM (eg.: 25th April) → Due by: Monday 5 PM (eg.: 28th April)
Limitations of the current setup
Confusing SLA duration: Many of our customers have told us that ‘1 day’ is interpreted as 24 hours.
Inconsistent duration available for agents to meet SLA: If your business hours vary across the week — say, Monday to Thursday: 9 AM to 5 PM (8 hours) and Friday: 10 AM to 4 PM (6 hours) — then using a "1 day" SLA gives agents different work time for agents depending on the day of the week, when the operational hours are set in business hours
For example:
A ticket created on Monday at 10 AM will be due by Tuesday at 10 AM, giving the agent a full 7 hours on Monday (10 AM to 5 PM) and 1 hour on Tuesday, totaling 8 business hours.
However, a ticket created on Friday at 10 AM will also be due by Monday at 10 AM, and since Friday only has 6 working hours (10 AM to 4 PM), the agent gets 2 fewer hours to work on it.
What’s changing
We’re rolling out a significant improvement. Setting an SLA to 1 day will be considered 24 business hours. We’ll be rolling out this change in batches.
As an example, take the following setup:
Business hours: 9 AM to 5 PM (Mon–Fri)
SLA: 1 day (24 business hours) with operational hours in business hours
Case 1: Ticket created at: Monday 9 AM → Due by: Wednesday 5 PM
Case 2: Ticket created at: Friday 6 PM → Due by: Wednesday 5 PM
Since your business hours provide 8 working hours per day, an SLA of 24 business hours equals 3 working days (8 × 3 = 24).
What should you do?
Depending on how your business hours and SLAs are set-up, you may or may not need to make changes to ensure you don’t see any difference in how SLA targets are set.
Scenario 1- No action is required from you if you don’t have SLAs set in business days, or if your business hours duration is consistent. In the next section you’ll find details how your SLA configuration will be modified to ensure your SLA targets remain the same.
Scenario 2- If a manual change required,you will see a banner in the admin page that looks like this. In the next section, under scenario 2, you’ll find details on how you can manually update your SLA configuration to make sure SLA targets don’t change for tickets.
SLAs that require action will be highlighted as “update required” in the SLA policies page for easier identification and correction.
Scenario 1: SLAs are modified automatically
If you have one or more business hours and all of them are the same duration (e.g., 8 hours a day), Freshdesk will reconfigure SLAs to ensure that the SLA targets for tickets remain unchanged.
Update SLA based on Scenario 1:
The business hours are set from 9 AM to 5 PM, which equals 8 business hours daily. To update SLAs from “1 day” to hours:
1 day will be set up as 8 hours
3 days will be set-up as→ 24 hours ( 8 x 3)
This (SLAs configured in days)
Is changed To This (SLAs configured in hours)
By doing this, your SLA targets remain the same, and agents have the same amount of time to meet these targets.
Scenario 2: SLAs need to be manually modified
Let’s say your teams follow different schedules:
Business Hours Setup
General working hours (Mon–Fri): 9 AM – 5 PM → 8 working hours
Europe (Mon-Fri): 8 AM – 12 AM → 16 working hours
Group Mapping
Update SLA based on Scenario 2:
Step 1: Identify All Your Business Hours
List your business hours in Admin > Business Hours and check their durations.
Example:
General working hours = 8 hours
Europe = 16 hours
Step 2: Find out which groups use Business hours
Go to Admin > Groups
Click each group
Check the business hours assigned
Example:
The groups, Billing and Escalations, use the BH “General Working Hours”
The groups Customer Support and Logistics use the BH “Europe”
Step 3: Create SLA policies in hours with group conditions
Let’s consider resolution time as the SLA target in this example. If you have multiple groups mapped to different business hours,
Change this
In Admin > SLA Policies, you may have Groups (mapped to different business hours) added to the same SLA policy (for example, Europe), having the same resolution time.
To This
In Admin > SLA Policies, create separate policies for groups mapped to the same business hours.
SLA policy for general working hours: Add the resolution SLA in hours and set the condition based on the groups mapped to the same business hours.
SLA Policy for Europe: Add a 16-hour resolution time and set the condition based on the groups mapped to the same business hours.
This way, you can define specific SLA policies for different business hours with significant time differences.
Need help setting this up? Write to support@freshdesk.com
FAQs
When will I see the changes?
Freshdesk standalone customers where an SLA change is required, excluding those on Freshdesk Omni (formerly Customer Service Suite) or integrated with Freshchat or Freshcaller, will undergo the rollout starting January 2026 in phases.
What happens on the day of the rollout? How will it affect my existing tickets?
When the changes are rolled out to your account, the new SLA logic will only apply to tickets updated after the rollout. If your SLAs are set in days and you have multiple Business Hours, you may not see changes right away. As tickets get updated over the next few hours, new due times will begin to appear. Depending on your Business Hours setup, these due times might become slightly shorter or longer if you haven’t adjusted your configuration before the rollout.
Can an SLA upgrade be reverted for an account after it's enabled?
No, reverting an SLA upgrade is not possible once it has been enabled for an account.
