Schedules

Schedules tell an Auto-Attendant Group to play which menu at which particular time.

A Schedule MUST be present in order for a Menu to play.  Setting up a Schedule is the final step in building your auto-attendant and is done after you create a Menu.

Even if you will only have one Menu that plays all the time, a Schedule must be present.  Schedules can only point to a single Menu.  But different Schedules can point to the same Menu.  Schedules can repeat certain times and days of a week (e.g. office hours, or after hours), or they can be active during a particular time frame (holiday party or vacation).

The most common type of schedule will play during certain hours every day of the week.  This  would include most office hours, lunch breaks, after hours, or other weekly schedules.

The Logic of Schedule Order

Schedule arrangements can vary from simple to complex.  As a result, it is important to understand how to the system decides which Schedule is active.  The system determines which Schedule to play according to two conditions:  rank and active time frame.  The system looks for the “first” active Schedule, as listed in order from top to bottom in the Auto-Attendant.  Schedules listed in the Auto-Attendant can be drag-and-dropped to the desired position to create the right conditions of priority.

Something to note:  Schedules can be created with overlapping active time frames but the system will only use one that is ranked highest.

Schedule Parameters

Most schedules in a healthcare office will repeat according to weekly schedules that have the same time periods on the same days week after week.  The obvious example is an office’s open hours and closed hours.  When creating a schedule, the options for building a weekly repeating schedule are shown in the default view.

There are many occasions in which a menu will play outside of these hours, like a holiday, a special training day, or a natural disaster.  For these types of schedules, there are a number of Advanced Schedule Options, available for a perfectly customized schedule.  The way these parameters work is that if any part of the parameter is valid, the schedule will be active.   For example, if you select Year = 2019, the Schedule will be active for every second, minute, hour, day, week and month of 2019.  In other words, it will be active the entire year.

Parameters with bold titles are the ones most likely to be used.

• Year: Active during Calendar year.  Use this option ONLY if you want a schedule to be active always for an entire year, but only that year.  This is likely to be very rarely used  (valid entries 0-9999)
• Year Day: Active during a particular Day of year. Use this option ONLY if you want a schedule to be active for a specific day of the current year.  This is likely to be very rarely used (valid entries 1-366)
• Month:  Use this option ONLY if you want a schedule to be active for a specific   of the current year.  This is likely to be rarely used  (Valid Entries 1-12 (Jan = 1, etc.))
• Month Day: Use this option ONLY if you want a schedule to be active for a specific Day of the of the current Month.  This is likely to be rarely used  (Valid Entries 1-31)
• Week: Week of year – Use this option ONLY if you want a schedule to be active for a specific week of the current year.  This is likely to be very rarely used  (Valid Entries 1-53)
• Month Week: Week of month – Use this option ONLY if you want a schedule to be active for a specific week of EVERY month.  This is likely to be rarely used  (Valid Entries 1-6
• Weekday: Day of week, Use this option if you want a schedule to be active for a specific weekday of every week.  This is likely to be used very frequently used  (Valid Entries 1-7 (Sun = 1, Mon = 2, etc.)) and frequently in combination with Time of Day.  NOTE:  Sunday is day #1, Monday is day #2
• Hour:  Use this option if you want a schedule to be active for every minute of a particular HOUR or range of HOURS every day.  This is likely to be rarely used  (Valid Entries 0-23).  NOTE:  the ending hour of a range will play til during that entire hour.  So if a schedule ends at 16, it will continue to play until 17.  For a schedule to play 9-5, the setting in Hour would be 9-16.
• Minute: Minute (of the hour),  Use this option if you want a schedule to be active for a specific minute of an hour.  This is likely to be rarely used and if it is used, is likely to be used in combination with Hour or some other parameter  (Valid Entries 0-59)
• Minute of day: Use this option if you want a schedule to be active for a specific minute of an hour in a Day.  This is likely to be rarely used and if it is used, is likely to be used in combination with Hour or some other parameter (Valid entries 1-1440) (midnight = 1, 1am = 60, noon = 720, etc.)
• Time Of Day: Time range formatted: hh:mm[:ss]-hh:mm[:ss] (seconds optional) Example: 08:00-17:00
• Date Time:  Use this option if you want a schedule to be active for a specific Date and Time frame.  This is very commonly used and usually used for holiday or special office closures:  (Valid entries written in the following format YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm[:ss]~YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm[:ss] (seconds are optional.  Note the tilde between dates)) Example: 2010-10-01 00:00:01~2010-10-15 23:59:59
• Extension:   Extension is not a time parameter, but an action that will occur during the Schedule, before going to the Menu.  If set, the Extension will be tried for the number of seconds in Call_Timeout prior to sending the call to the Menu.  A setting of 0 is infinite.