Trigger actions based on time of day lead created

[Anonymous]

Is there a way to trigger alerts based on whether a lead was created within business hours?

For example, if a lead is created within business hours we might want our sales reps to follow up within two hours, yet if a lead is created outside of normal business hours the reps might have 6 hours.

[Anonymous]

If you have SFDC or similar you can probably set up a time based task upon proper MQL designation (handoff).  You will want to be careful about using just a create date as they could already be in your system but not have matured enough therefore the create date could be some time ago compared to their qualifying activity.

You might handle this by just providing the reaction window and sending the alert immediately upon qualifcation.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

I noticed that the common response to these time of day/business hours questions is to use the advanced Wait step settings. But that doesn't really help you restrict the activity to specific windows of time in a binary, on/off kind of way.

Here's what I've come up with to accomplish something similar. In my case, it's an auto-response to the lead during business hours:

• I created a custom field called "Last Form Completion Time" with the string field type
• When a form is completed, I run a Change Data Value flow step using the {{system.time}} token, which timestamps the field by time of day only. Example: "09:41 AM (GMT -0700)"
• Now I can use the Last Form Completion Time value as a campaign filter. So, to send an auto-response during business hours only, I have four advanced filters set up as (1 and 2) or (3 and 4):
  • 1 - Last Form Completion Time starts with 08,09,10,11
  • 2 - Last Form Completion Time contains AM
  • 3 - Last Form Completion Time starts with 12,01,02,03,04,05,06
  • 4 - Last Form Completion Time contains PM

It's a bit of a convoluted hack, but it'll do until there's an official feature that handles this scenario.

[Anonymous]

Adam, that's brilliant. Solved a problem for me -- thanks!