Here's a little trick to help make things easier as we find the holiday season upon us. Will your office be closed over the holidays? Would you like to keep your customers in the loop of your holiday schedule? Would you like calls to automatically roll over to voicemail when no one is scheduled to be in the office? You can do all of that with Junction Network's OnSIP Hosted PBX by using business hour rules and announcements.
To keep your customers in the loop on your holiday hours:
- Create a new recording under 'Resources' or by dialing *94 from any OnSIP phone. Record your holiday hours message as a recording.
- Create a new 'Announcement' under the 'Apps' tab. Name it something easy to remember like "holiday."
- Re-record your attendant menu greeting to say something like "Press 4 to hear our holiday hours."
- Edit your attendant menu so that "on the press of 4" the caller now hears your new Announcement created above.
To roll calls over to voicemail when no one will be in the office:
- Create a business hour rules for the week of 12/25 and 12/31. Business hour rules are free.
- Set it up so that when users will not be in the office, Tuesday and Wednesday for example, you set the business as "closed."
- Put them in place on Monday (or any time that week before the holiday) and let them run for the week.
You can create as many Business Hour rules as you need and apply them at any time, but it's a manual process. Business hour rules are day-of-week and hour-of-day based. Be sure to return to normal operation (normal recordings and normal business hour rules) upon your return.