Set Working Hours for Your HighLevel Conversation AI Agent

Key Takeaways

• HighLevel Conversation AI agents can run on a schedule, channel by channel, instead of answering around the clock.
• You can set the agent to cover nights and weekends only, lunch breaks only, or any mix, with up to 10 time slots per day.
• A conversation that starts before closing time keeps going after it, so nobody gets cut off mid-question.
• Off-hours messages can trigger an auto reply, a team alert, and a follow-up the moment you open again.
• As a GHL consultant in the Bay Area, we set this up so the AI covers the hours your team can't.

Your team texts back fast from 8 to 5. Then everybody goes home, and the 7pm text from a ready-to-book customer sits there until morning. HighLevel's Conversation AI can cover that gap, and now you get to decide exactly when it's on. In a recent Content Army tutorial, Andrew from HighLevel walks through working hours for Conversation AI agents. Here's what it does, how to set it up, and how we use it for Bay Area clients as a GHL consultant out of Los Gatos.

What working hours actually change

Out of the box, a Conversation AI agent answers texts, DMs and chats every hour of every day. That's great for some businesses. Others want a person on the conversation during the day and the AI only when nobody's around. Working hours give you that switch.

You set a schedule for the agent the same way you'd set one for a staff member. Inside those hours the agent replies. Outside them it stays quiet, or does the off-hours actions you choose. And the schedule applies only to the channels you pick, so you could let the AI cover Instagram DMs all day while it handles SMS only after closing.

How to set it up

Go to AI Agents, then Conversation AI, and open the agent you want to schedule (or create one). In the Deploy section, pick the channels the agent runs on: SMS, email, Facebook, Instagram and so on. Then turn on Working Hours at the top.

Now choose which of those channels the hours apply to and build the schedule. A few patterns that work well:

• Nights only. Set the agent from 5pm to 11:59pm, then add a second slot from midnight to 9am the next day. The AI covers the whole night and hands back in the morning.
• Lunch only. One slot from noon to 1pm so the team can step away.
• Weekends. Use the delete button to switch a day off, or keep Saturday and Sunday on all day.

Each day takes up to 10 time slots. Once one day looks right, the copy button pushes it to every day or just the days you pick.

You also choose the time zone. Business time zone fits schedules tied to your office, like lunch coverage. Contact time zone fits when you care about the customer's local time.

The advanced settings that make it feel human

This is where the feature gets good. Scroll down to Advanced Settings and you'll find the controls for what happens at the edges of your schedule.

Ongoing conversations past active hours. Say the agent is on until 5pm and a customer starts chatting at 4:30. At 5:05 they reply. With this setting on, the agent keeps that conversation going instead of going silent. It just won't pick up brand new ones. It's on by default, and it's the setting we'd never turn off.

Inactivity limit. Pair it with a time limit so the agent stops replying once a conversation has been quiet for a set period. Five minutes, an hour, whatever fits how your customers text.

Auto reply outside active hours. If you don't want the AI chatting after hours at all, it can still send one friendly message, with the contact's first name pulled in. Something like "Hey Maria, thanks for reaching out. We'll text you first thing in the morning."

Team notification. Pick who gets alerted when an off-hours message lands, so a hot lead never just sits there.

Follow up when hours resume. The agent reaches back out the moment you open: "Hi Maria, we're in now. What can we help with?" The conversation picks right back up.

Why a GHL consultant in the Bay Area sets it up this way

Bay Area customers text after work. Commutes are long, kids get picked up, and the quote request goes out at 8pm from the couch. The business that answers that night usually gets the appointment.

But plenty of owners here like their team on the daytime conversations. A dental office in San Jose wants its front desk talking to patients. A contractor in Los Gatos wants to quote the job himself. Working hours let both happen: people by day, AI by night, and one inbox in their own HighLevel account showing every message either way.

Voice AI has a similar schedule setting, so the phones and the texts can follow the same hours.

Practical Steps

1. Write down the hours your team actually answers texts and DMs, and the hours nobody does.
2. Open your Conversation AI agent, go to Deploy, pick your channels and turn on Working Hours.
3. Build the schedule around the gaps, then copy it across the days that match.
4. Leave ongoing conversations on and set an inactivity limit that fits your customers.
5. Add an off-hours auto reply, a team alert, and a morning follow-up message.
6. Text the business from your own phone after hours and read exactly what a customer sees.

Watch the full working hours tutorial

Final thoughts

The best AI setup is the one that fits how your business already runs. Working hours let Conversation AI fill the exact hours your team can't, and the advanced settings keep every handoff smooth. On Point Tech Solutions is a GHL consultant in the Bay Area, based in Los Gatos and serving San Jose. We build it for you, or teach you with an SOP, and you own everything we build.

Want to build this yourself? Join the On Point Tech Academy. It's free, and we build live every Tuesday and Thursday.