A schedule is a set of time rules. When does your business consider itself open. When does lunch hour start. When is the front desk closed for training on Thursday afternoons. A schedule captures any pattern of open and closed hours, and any routing object can use it.
Build the schedule once, then attach it to auto attendants, hunt groups, and individual extensions. One schedule can drive the whole company or a single menu.
How schedules work
A schedule has a list of time windows. Each window is a day of the week plus a start and end time. Monday 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Tuesday 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. And so on.
At the moment a call arrives, the system checks the schedule. If the current time falls inside a window, the call follows the business-hours branch of whatever object the schedule is attached to. If not, it follows the after-hours branch.
Business hours
The most common schedule is simple office hours. Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. Create one schedule called Business Hours and attach it to every auto attendant, hunt group, and extension that needs it.
If your hours change, edit the schedule once. Every object using it picks up the change the next time a call arrives. There is no need to visit each attendant and update it separately.
Lunch hours
Lunch is a gap in the middle of the day. You can model it by adding two windows per weekday instead of one. Monday 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM and Monday 1:30 PM to 5:00 PM. The hour in between is outside the schedule, so the call follows the after-hours branch.
A second common pattern is a second schedule attached to a submenu. The main menu stays open all day, but the support submenu has its own schedule that closes during lunch and plays a different greeting.
Attaching a schedule
- Open
Schedulesin the admin portal - Create the schedule and add the time windows
- Open the auto attendant, hunt group, or extension you want to control
- Pick the schedule from the dropdown and save
The attachment is live the instant you save. One schedule can be attached to any number of objects, and the same object can have both a regular schedule and a separate holiday schedule running in parallel.
When to build a new one
You do not need a schedule per object. Most companies have two or three schedules total. Main business hours, after-hours sales, and a holiday calendar is often enough.
Build a new schedule when a routing object truly follows its own hours. If the sales team works until 7 PM but the rest of the office closes at 5 PM, create one schedule called Main Hours and another called Sales Hours, and attach each to its own place.