Building Time Periods

Policy rules and query conditions can test for events that occur (or not) during user-defined time periods.

When you open the Time Period Builder, a set of pre-defined time periods is available. You can edit the available time periods to meet your needs or you can define your own.

Adding a time period

  1. Browse to the Time Period Builder by clicking Setup > Tools and Views > Time Period Builder.
  2. Click Add icon to open the Add Time Period page.
  3. You can create either contiguous or repeating block time period. For example, the following two custom time periods both begin at 09:00 (9 AM) Monday and end on 17:00 (5 PM) Friday:
    • Workweek is contiguous and defines a single 164-hour period beginning at 9 AM on Monday and ending at 5 PM on Friday.
    • Workday is a repeating block (that is, noncontiguous) and defines five separate eight-hour time periods (9 AM – 5 PM), on five consecutive days (Monday – Friday).
  4. In the Name box, enter a name for this time period. For this example, enter either Workweek or Workday.
    Note: Do not use apostrophes (') in the description.
    • For Workweek, select Contiguous.
    • For Workday, select Repeating block.
  5. Enter a beginning time in hours (00-24) and minutes (00-59) in the Hour From box. For this example, enter 09:00.
  6. Enter an ending time in hours (00-24) and minutes (00-59) in the Hour To box. For this example, enter 17:00.
  7. Select a beginning day of the week in Weekday From.
  8. Select an ending day of the week in Weekday To.
  9. Click OK to save the new time period.
Note: When you define a time period, Sunday is always assumed to be the first day of the week. Therefore, if you define a full week, you must start with Sunday. That is, you can set DAY FROM to Sunday and DAY TO to Saturday, but setting DAY FROM to Monday and DAY TO to Sunday returns unexpected results.

Editing a Time Period

  1. From the Time Period Builder, select an existing time period and click Edit (pencil) icon to open the Edit time period page.
  2. Change any fields as needed in the Edit time period page for the selected time period.
  3. Click OK to save your changes.

Removing a Time Period

From the Time Period Builder, select the time period that you want to remove, and click Delete icon to delete the selected time period.
Note: You cannot delete a time period that is used by an existing policy rule.