V20 - Global Office hours with the new departments

[ProudCanadian]

I am hoping someone can explain to me how the new office hours work, as reading the forums and documentation still has me a bit confused.

Current V18 setup, we have various groups for each department. These are used often to quickly look at a specific department for who is available to transfer calls to. For office hours, while we do have one site with their own special hours all the other departments all operate identically.

My question, with V20 I have seen people say to either have one default department with everyone then you have global hours, or set it individually for each broken out department. Can I have it both ways?
If I keep the default department and set office hours on it and have all my users as part of that department, as well as their actual department, do the default department office hours apply to them?

 

[NikolasA_3CX]

Each extension can be part of multiple departments but it will only follow the office hours of its main department which can be seen in the General Tab of the extension as shown in the screenshot below.

Also, you have the option to change which is the main department for that extension from the dropdown menu and change it whenever it is needed.

 

[ProudCanadian]

So are Departments in V20 primarily used just for office hours, or are there other benefits to sorting out all the extensions into departments?

 

[TheodorosG_3CX]

Creating departments will allow you or other users to manage extensions depending on the department.
For example you can create a department with specific office hours and route calls but also one extension that can manage this department only. I would suggest that you also check the below guideline for more information:
• https://www.3cx.com/docs/manual/create-extensions/#h.xali49yrkkhr
• https://www.3cx.com/docs/manual/departments/
• https://www.3cx.com/docs/manual/access-roles/