Typical Business use case for Time of Day Call Routing (auto forward after hours)
How to Use Time of Day Routing with Time Frames and Auto Attendants.
Prerequisites
Scenario
We're looking at a typical scenario where a company works Monday - Friday from 8 to 5pm Eastern Time. They have the weekends off. This company has an Auto Attendant specifically for the work week hours that may route to Call Queues or live agents/extensions. After work hours, another Auto Attendant is used to provide an alternative message letting callers know they have called outside standard business hours. The afterhours Auto Attendant may route to offnet numbers or directly to a voicemail. This same AA is used on the weekends.
Now, how do we automate this so we're not manually switching the main number between the different Auto Attendants daily?
Find the Number to Use
We'll start by heading to the Inventory Tab in our Admin portal
Enable Time Frames
Then we will edit the number we would like to use for out Time of Day routing. This would be the number called to reach your Auto Attendant, normally. For our example, we're using 919.555.1234. We set "Enable Time Frames" to Yes. You'll note that after this is enabled, you'll be asked to choose a Time Zone and the Default Domain Time Frame is already set. By Default, the Domain Time Frame is ALWAYS. If no other option is met, this time frame action will take place.
Choose Time Zone
We choose US/Eastern from the dropdown menu
Select Time Frame
Then move to selecting the time frame. When setting time frames, the top time frame is the highest weight if the time settings meet criteria. If Default is the top selection here, no other time frames will be hit. Typically, you should set the Default to the Afterhours AA because it's easier to define the work week hours. Click the + then choose one of the time frames not already in use. Since we've assigned Afterhours AA to the Default time frame, we'll pick the Business Hours time frame.
Adjust Time Frame Priority
You may notice that once you have this time frame in place, it may be out of position for proper use. Default is above the Business Hours time frame so we'll need to move that up for it to work as expected. Remember, these act from the top down in priority.
You can drag time frames by using the up/down arrows on the left. We moved Business Hours to the top here.
Now, with the Business Hours above the Default After Hours AA calls should route based on our proper time of day settings. For reference, we choose to use Auto Attendants but you can have the same results using Users, Call Queues, Voicemail or Forwarding to an offnet number. Just click Save and you're done. Test your call flows to ensure they are functioning as desired.
If you have further issues, please reach out to support via our Chatbot (located inside your portal), email support@usipcom.com, or call us at 800-972-5004, option 2.
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