Distributely Schedules vs HubSpot User Schedules

Each team has an Availability Source field with two options:

• Distributely schedules
• HubSpot user schedules (runtime)

It is set per team, on the team's own configuration. Two teams in the same portal can use different sources. The default is Distributely schedules.

What each option reads

Distributely schedules uses the hours and time off you enter in the Manage Schedule flow on the Team Agents screen. Nothing outside Distributely affects availability.

HubSpot user schedules (runtime) reads the rep's own availability in HubSpot at the moment the record is routed. Three things come from HubSpot:

• The user's availability status. If it is set to away, the member is unavailable.
• The user's working hours. If now falls inside them, the member is available; if it does not, the member is outside hours.
• Out-of-office periods. If now falls inside one, the member is treated as on time off.

The rep's timezone comes from HubSpot too when it is available there.

The practical tradeoff

Distributely schedules give you full control in one place. Hours are exactly what you configured, they do not change because a rep toggled something in HubSpot, and you can bulk import them. The cost is that it is a second system to keep current, and reps do not maintain it themselves.

HubSpot user schedules reuse what reps already keep up to date. A rep flipping themselves to away in HubSpot, or booking out-of-office before a trip, immediately affects routing with no action from you. The cost is that you no longer control the inputs, and the accuracy of your routing now depends on reps maintaining their HubSpot profiles.

If HubSpot availability cannot be read for anyone on the team, Distributely falls back to the schedules configured in Distributely.

This happens when the HubSpot connection cannot return availability for the team's members. Distributely does not stop routing and does not treat everyone as unavailable. It quietly evaluates the team using its own schedules instead.

That is safe behavior, but only if those schedules exist. If you switched a team to the HubSpot source and never filled in Distributely schedules, the fallback finds nothing, every member is unavailable, and the team's Fallback Behavior fires. 

One more difference worth knowing

Time-off periods entered in Distributely are not consulted when a team uses the HubSpot source. On that team, absences have to live in HubSpot as out-of-office or away status. A vacation entered in Distributely's Time Off section will not stop that team from routing to the rep.

Member caps are unaffected by this setting. Caps are evaluated after hours and time off, whichever source supplied them.

Which to choose

Choose Distributely schedules when coverage hours are a business rule rather than a personal preference, when you need split shifts or precise per-day hours, when you want to manage hours in bulk, or when your reps do not reliably maintain their HubSpot profiles.

Choose HubSpot user schedules (runtime) when your reps already live in HubSpot's availability tools, when away status and out-of-office are genuinely kept current, and when you would rather have one place to update than two.

If you pick the HubSpot source, do two things first. Confirm that every member on the team actually has working hours configured in HubSpot, or accept that the ones who do not are always on. And fill in Distributely schedules anyway, as a safety net for the fallback.

FAQ

Can I use HubSpot hours on one team and Distributely hours on another?

Yes. Availability Source is per team.

Does switching the source delete my Distributely schedules?

No. They are kept and are used again if you switch back, or if the HubSpot fallback engages.