Holiday Schedule Setup

[[email protected]]

I have a very simple 3CX 15.5 setup using remote STUN phones. The DID is routed to a call group that during office hours rings multiple phones, and after-hour calls routed to an auto-attendant that offers the option to make a selection too be connected for emergency service. If emergency service is selected, the system sends the call to a cell phone that is answered by an on-call technician.

The system works flawlessly both during office hours and after-hour routing with office hours 8 - 5 Monday - Friday, and after - hours outside these time periods. Calls are always routed to the cell phone after-hours if selected.

I set up the holiday schedule with all dates for the holidays the office is closed. It was my understanding that the holiday schedule simply changes the system to after-hours status on the configured holidays, but during the July 4th holiday, the auto-attendant would answer, but when selecting emergency service to route the call to a cell phone, the system would wait the same 1 ring as set up for after-hours, then disconnect the caller. There was no prompt of "transferring the call" as there is during normal after-hours, and the log just indicated that the call was unanswered. In addition, while in holiday mode, we could not make outbound calls of any kind. Attempting to make an outbound call of any kind resulted in a normal busy signal. Once I deleted the July 4th holiday from the holiday schedule and forced the system back to the regular weekly schedule, everything worked normally including call transfer and outbound calls.

I must be missing something in the setup, however there is no real configuration other than the holiday date for the holiday schedule. I cannot find any other setup necessary but there was nothing I could do when the phones were on the holiday schedule to make the transfer to the cell phone work. Everything else was working correctly except for any type of outbound call including transfer to voice-mail, phone answering, auto-attendant, etc. I tried rebooting the server and nothing changed.

 

[leejor]

Did you check the Activity Log, for a clue as to why outbound calls failed? I'm going to assume that outbound calling not working , and the mobile call not completing, are a one in the same issue. There is an option to block all outbound calls off-hours. Perhaps that was inadvertently implemented.

 

[Fred Pettengill]

Did you check the Activity Log, for a clue as to why outbound calls failed? I'm going to assume that outbound calling not working , and the mobile call not completing, are a one in the same issue. There is an option to block all outbound calls off-hours. Perhaps that was inadvertently implemented.

The log simply said the call was unanswered. It was the same for outgoing calls and the calls forwarded by the auto-attendant to cell phone. The calls are forwarded normally after-hours, which I believe is supposedly the same settings used holidays. They are not set to block outbound calls. After deleting the holiday, the after-hour settings worked properly that same day after 5:00?

 

[leejor]

The log simply said the call was unanswered. It was the same for outgoing calls and the calls forwarded by the auto-attendant to cell phone.

So, for an outgoing call, that failed, it shows the call routing to your provider, using the correct outbound rule, but "unanswered"? And the correct digits are being sent to the provider?

 

[[email protected]]

Yes… Again, as I understand it, it is exactly the same “rules” as after-hours? Am I incorrect and there are different rules for the holiday schedule? There are no rules to set for the holiday schedule. I THINK the docs say that the Holiday schedule just uses the same rules as out of office / after hours? If there are different rules for the holiday schedule, then that is what I am missing, so I do not understand how the holiday settings work. As soon as I deleted the holiday and the system went into the normal after-hours, and since then every day just like before, everything has worked normally just as it did before the date hit July 4 and the system was on the holiday.


I did not see any error other than that the call was unanswered. Even when trying to make an outbound call. I got an immediate normal busy signal, and the log said the call was unanswered. The cell number it was calling in the log was using the same mobile number it routes to every day out of auto-attendant. Auto-attendant was exactly the same. Nothing was changed except for setting July 4 as a holiday?

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

Hello,

Please note that during a holiday all calls are routed to the HOL Digital receptionist and not to the normal out of office Digital receptionist. The caller will hear the prompt set under the Holidays section if set or the HOL Digital receptionist prompt will play (if the option is set under Trunk settings).

What i assume happened is that during the Holiday the call reached the HOL Digital receptionist that had no options set and the destination was set to end call. Once you deleted the Holiday the system went back to Out of office and calls were routed to the Out of office Digital receptionist.

Outbound calls however should have worked normally even if the system was set to out of office so not sure what happened there. We will need to see the PBX logs to determine the cause the call failed.

 

[[email protected]]

The calls were routed to the same digital receptionist that is used during normal after-hours calls. Just as any day after 5:00 or on week-ends, the caller was routed to the same digital receptionist that presented the same options using the same custom recordings. One choice is voicemail, one choice is emergency service (Which is configured to a forwarding extension, and the other menu options are recorded messages about our rates, office hours, etc. The auto-attendant worked fine and all of the functions, including the voice mail option worked fine. (I called the number trying different options for about an hour).

When presented the same auto attendant after-hours, if the caller selects emergency service, they hear a prompt telling them their call is being transferred. The same call-forward auto-attendant choice on July 4 did not play the transferring prompt, and within about a second just disconnected the call.

Absolutely everything in the system worked exactly the same as it did during normal after-hours mode, except that no outbound calls worked. There is no holiday receptionist set up. There is only one auto-attendant configured, and it was the one that was presented to the caller on July 4. I am guessing that the call forward was not working because outbound calls were not working as exactly the same thing happened as when we picked up a handset and tried to call any outbound number. We would immediately get a normal busy signal, and the log would show that the call was unanswered. The only thing configured differently for the July 4 holiday was the July 4 entry in the configured holidays. Nothing was changed to make it work except to delete the holiday from the list. After deletion, the same auto-attendant was presented to the caller, and call transfer worked, and after deletion outbound calls immediately began working.

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

It sounds like the issue was only with outbound calls then on the specific day. Have you tried replicating the issue by setting up a "fake" holiday to see if you experience the same issue? If you can then i would recommend setting the PBX to verbose logging and checking the logs to determine the cause of the issue. Additionally a wireshark capture could help identify if the call is being sent to the provider or not.
Under your trunk settings is the option "Play holiday prompt when it's a global holiday" enabled or not?