Different hours for different departments

[Jes.amos]

I have a medical office that has 12 departments and there are at least 3 unique hours of operation for the different departments. The main reception has hours 08:00 - 17:00 mon to thurs and 09:00-15:00 fri, the Pain Management department has hours of 08:30 - 16:30 mon-thurs and 9:30 - 14:30 Fri, and the MRI department has hours of 11:00 - 15:00 monday to thursday. All calls are through the same DID and routed via IVR to appropriate call queues. Can I set unique hours of operation on the queues or is there a better way to route calls in a more advanced way? Should I be looking at Call Flow Designer?

over simplified Call Flow

Main DID->IVR->Queue 1 (main Reception) 08:00-17:00
->Queue 2 (Pain Reception) 08:30-16:30
->Queue 3 (MRI Reception) 11:00-15:00
->Ring Group (On Call Docs) 08:00-1700
->IVR 2 (Info) 24/7
->Ring Group (Administration) 08:00-17:00

 

[jmitch11]

CFD would accomplish this for you in a more professional manner (in my opinion). You could also setup a loopback trunk for each department; point your IVR to Queue2-Loopback and setup that trunk with your in/out of office settings. This is working well for me at the moment as you can set custom office hours for each trunk.

More on loopback trunks:
https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/internal-extensions-dialing-did-loop-out-and-back-in.40588/

 

[jbryant84]

Each option in the menu will require an unregistered dummy forwarding extension. The IVR menu options will be pointed at these dummy extensions. There will be overrides that point the menu option at the queue during the specified hours, otherwise the call will go elsewhere (voicemail for the department usually).

Make a new extension. On the forwarding rules for the extension, set the destination if busy/unregistered to be where you want the call to go outside of the specified hours for both Internal and External calls


All the way at the bottom of the forwarding rules, create an exception for *, set the hours to be the hours for the option, and set the destination to be the queue.

 

[Jes.amos]

Each option in the menu will require an unregistered dummy forwarding extension. The IVR menu options will be pointed at these dummy extensions. There will be overrides that point the menu option at the queue during the specified hours, otherwise the call will go elsewhere (voicemail for the department usually).

Make a new extension. On the forwarding rules for the extension, set the destination if busy/unregistered to be where you want the call to go outside of the specified hours for both Internal and External calls

All the way at the bottom of the forwarding rules, create an exception for *, set the hours to be the hours for the option, and set the destination to be the queue.

That is definitely worth a shot. I'll see if I can make this work.

 

[Jes.amos]

CFD would accomplish this for you in a more professional manner (in my opinion). You could also setup a loopback trunk for each department; point your IVR to Queue2-Loopback and setup that trunk with your in/out of office settings. This is working well for me at the moment as you can set custom office hours for each trunk.

More on loopback trunks:
https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/internal-extensions-dialing-did-loop-out-and-back-in.40588/

This sounds like probably the right way to do things. Trouble is I have never used CFD and don't really know where to start. Maybe I'll look into CFD a little more before I go creating a bunch of dummy extensions.

 

[Jes.amos]

To Throw another monkey wrench into things, Occasionally they get behind and need to stay open later on certain days on a non defined schedule. Is there a way to route calls on an as needs basis rather than by schedule?

 

[jmitch11]

To Throw another monkey wrench into things, Occasionally they get behind and need to stay open later on certain days on a non defined schedule. Is there a way to route calls on an as needs basis rather than by schedule?

I don't see a way to do that without CFD honestly but someone else may chime in with more information. But for instance if you wanted to setup your CFD to view the number of calls in queue and if after hours but queue has more than 5 people, continue to route as normal until queue is less than 5, that would be possible.

 

[Jes.amos]

I don't see a way to do that without CFD honestly but someone else may chime in with more information. But for instance if you wanted to setup your CFD to view the number of calls in queue and if after hours but queue has more than 5 people, continue to route as normal until queue is less than 5, that would be possible.

OK Fine i'll look into CFD. I just installed it and my first thought is that it looks about as intuitive as the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment. Need to do some training before this will make any sense. Cheers!

 

[jmitch11]

This sounds like probably the right way to do things. Trouble is I have never used CFD and don't really know where to start. Maybe I'll look into CFD a little more before I go creating a bunch of dummy extensions.

Please keep in mind that using the loopback trunk will utilize 2 licences per call, so if that's a concern it may be best that you use the extension method mentioned by @jbryant84. In addition to what he said, go into the options of each extension and select "Do not show extension in 3CX company phonebook" so you won't have them cluttering up your phonebook.

 

[jbryant84]

go into the options of each extension and select "Do not show extension in 3CX company phonebook" so you won't have them cluttering up your phonebook.

Good point, thanks.

 

[Jes.amos]

Th

Please keep in mind that using the loopback trunk will utilize 2 licences per call, so if that's a concern it may be best that you use the extension method mentioned by @jbryant84. In addition to what he said, go into the options of each extension and select "Do not show extension in 3CX company phonebook" so you won't have them cluttering up your phonebook.

I'm not sure if that will be an issue. We have a 32CC license and only have 20 channels on the SIP trunk so probably not a huge concern the average load is 4-8 calls in queue and I've seen peaks of 18 concurrent calls.