An auto attendant is the automated menu that greets callers and routes them to the right place. Press 1 for sales, press 2 for support, and so on. It sits in front of your company number and decides what happens next.
Every Vocatech auto attendant is configured from a single page inside admin.vocatech.com. Business hours, after-hours, holidays, and submenus all live on one screen. You do not jump between tabs to wire up a call flow.
How it works
An auto attendant has three possible states at any moment: business hours, after-hours, and holiday. A schedule decides which state is active. The schedule is checked at the exact second the call arrives, so a call that lands at 4:59 PM follows the business-hours rules and a call at 5:00 PM follows the after-hours rules.
Each state has its own greeting and its own set of key presses. You can have the same menu options in both states or different ones. Most companies keep the key presses consistent and swap only the greeting text and the routing destinations.
Business hours
The business-hours branch is what callers hear when your office is open. You define the greeting, the key presses, and where each press sends the call.
A key press can route to an extension, a hunt group, a call center, an external phone number, voicemail, or a submenu. The most common layout is a short greeting, two or three key options, and a default destination if the caller does nothing.
- Greeting text or uploaded audio
- Key press mapping (0 through 9, plus * and #)
- Timeout destination for callers who do not press anything
- Invalid destination for callers who press an unmapped key
After-hours routing
The after-hours branch runs whenever the attached schedule says you are closed. Most companies use this to play a short closed message and send the caller to voicemail. You can also route to an on-call hunt group, an answering service, or a cell phone.
The after-hours greeting is the place to tell callers your hours and when you will return calls. Keep it short. Long greetings get hung up on.
Holiday greetings
Holidays are their own branch and take priority over both business hours and after-hours. If today is on the holiday schedule, callers hear the holiday greeting no matter what time it is.
Vocatech pre-loads the common US federal holidays. You can add your own dates for days you observe that are not on the federal list. See holiday-aware routing for the full pre-loaded list and how to add custom days.
Submenus
A submenu is an auto attendant inside an auto attendant. The top-level menu might say press 2 for support, and pressing 2 drops the caller into a support submenu with its own options: press 1 for billing questions, press 2 for technical issues, press 3 to leave a message.
Submenus have the same structure as the main menu. Same greeting, same key presses, same timeout. You can nest them a few levels deep, but deep menu trees get abandoned by callers. Two levels is usually the right limit.
Recording greetings
You do not need to record your own greetings unless you want to. Type the text of the greeting in the portal and our AI generates the audio. The voice is neutral and professional. Regenerate as often as you want until the phrasing is right.
If you prefer a human voice, you can upload an MP3 or WAV file. Some companies record one professional voice for the main greeting and use AI for the after-hours and holiday branches that change more often.
Attaching a schedule
An auto attendant without a schedule runs business-hours routing around the clock. Attach a schedule to tell it when to switch into after-hours mode. Attach a holiday schedule to override both branches on observed days.
- Build the schedule once under
Schedulesin the admin portal - Open the auto attendant and pick the schedule from the dropdown
- Optionally attach a separate holiday schedule
- Save. The change is live the moment you click save.
One schedule can be attached to many auto attendants. If you change the schedule, every attendant using it updates at once. There is no need to edit each attendant separately.