Multiple Office Hours

[Andy Johnson]

I have a client with a Residential service and a Commercial service. They want Residential to answer phones from 8 am - 7 pm and keep Commercial set for 8 am - 5 pm. We have a main Digital Receptionist saying press 1 for Residential or 2 for Commercial. 1 for Residential goes to a call queue. 2 for Commercial goes to another DR breaking out Accounting, Service, HR, etc. I setup a test and tried: Main DR -> press 8 (unused number for testing), extension 378, which has Office hours set to 8am - 2 pm -> when available route calls to queue. I called in after 2 and it routed the call to the queue. I expected it to go to voicemail. So I then set a break time from 2 pm - 7 am, no change. I did click OK after making the changes...

Anyone more creative than I out there? I wonder if I need to use the Call Flow tool to do what I want. I don't know if I have the skills for that but I guess there's no day like today to start learning.

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

Hello @Andy Johnson

There are a couple ways to achieve this functionality. The easiest is to use a different DID or for the residential and Commercial use and apply office hours per DID / Inbound rule.
The second way to use the call flow designer and create a custom flow that will allow you to route calls based on multiple office hours. https://www.3cx.com/phone-system/call-flow-designer/
You can also do it the way you are trying to do it with dummy extension but you need to apply custom office hours to the extension and enable auto switching. The extension will be available during In office hours, Away during break times and DND when out of office hours.
You could also do this by using the exceptions under the extensions forwarding rules which do not relay of the extensions status.
Let me know if further clarification is needed on any of the above