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Scaling Global Teams in Front: Which Business Hours Setup Actually Works?

  • March 24, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 17 views

Jared at Overleaf
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Our company has been using Front for many years across nearly every department, including Support, Sales, Ops, Sales Support, and Finance. As we’ve grown more distributed, we are looking to move away from a "one-size-fits-all" business hours setting to get more accurate analytics and finally implement SLAs for all teams.

We have a complex geographic footprint:

  • Global Support: Distributed worldwide, providing near 24/7 coverage.

  • Ops & Sales Support: Primarily U.S. East Coast (Mon–Fri, 8–5).

  • Finance: Based in Europe, operating on a completely different workday.

After looking into Front’s documentation, I see there are a few ways to structure this (Workspace-level vs. Inbox-level hours), but I’m wary of the trade-offs.

I’m curious to hear from other global teams: which of these approaches have you implemented, and what worked best?

  • Option A: Multiple Workspaces (e.g., a "Europe Workspace" and a "US Workspace").

    • Concern: Does this silo the teams too much and make cross-departmental @mentions or moves more difficult?

  • Option B: Multiple Shared Inboxes (e.g., separate inboxes for each region).

    • Concern: Does this over-complicate your routing rules or make the sidebar feel cluttered?

  • Option C: One Workspace with Inbox-level Hours.

    • Concern: Is this granular enough to provide clean "Reply Time" data for teams that share certain resources?

If you’ve tried a few of these, I’d love to know which one gave you the best balance of accurate reporting without making the daily workflow too clunky for the teams.

1 reply

ejayr
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  • March 25, 2026

Hey Jared,

We see this a lot with globally distributed teams. Short answer: Option C (one workspace + inbox-level business hours) is the way to go.

Each shared inbox can have its own business hours and timezone, so your US East Coast Ops inbox, European Finance inbox, and global Support inbox each get accurate time-based analytics without splitting into separate workspaces.

A few quick notes:
- Option A (multiple workspaces) tends to over-silo things. Cross-workspace @mentions and conversation moves become clunky, and you're really solving an analytics problem, not an access problem.
- Option B (regional inboxes) can work alongside Option C if your team structure calls for it, but isn't required just for reporting accuracy.
- Shifts (Workforce Management) is the perfect companion here. Business hours control when the analytics clock runs; shifts control who's available for assignment and when. Together, they cover the full picture.

To set it up: Settings > Workspace > Inboxes > [select inbox] > Business Hours tab. Set the days, times, and timezone per inbox.

Hope that helps! Happy to go deeper on any of these if you want.