How to Manage Opening Hours and Out of Business Hours Messages
Overview
There are two levels of opening hour settings in Contact Expert:
- global level: defined in the Skype Parameters - General Parameters' Business Hours value and affects every inbound queue and outbound campaign where this parameter has effect in a specific Tenant.
- dialing rule level: it can be assigned to individual or multiple inbound queues and outbound campaigns.
The above settings have the following precedence:
Global level OOBH > Dialing Rule level OOBH
In other words, the global level settings override the dial rule level settings in the following way:
| Global | Dialing Rule | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Open | Open | Open on affected queues and campaigns |
| Open | Closed | Closed on affected queues and campaigns, open for all others |
| Closed | Open | Closed (all queues and campaigns) |
| Closed | Closed | Closed (all queues and campaigns) |
Notes on the Global Level Business Hours Definition
The Skype Parameters resource and consequently the Out of Business Hours parameter are associated to Tenants, meaning that every queue and campaign on the designated Tenant is affected. Since a Tenant can span multiple Domains, the "area of authority" for this setting is wider (on multiple-domains-multiple-tenants deployments, where a Tenant spans more than one Domain).
Depending on the version of your product the "global" level of business hours definition either means the Domain or Tenant. Hereafter, this article simply mentions "Global" or "Dialing Rule" level.
Step-by-step guide
Configure Global Level Business Hours
- Log on to the Contact Expert Portal.
- Navigate to the Infrastructure → Multimedia Infrastructure → Skype Parameters form and Edit the Business Hours row of the General Parameters column for your specific Tenant.
- Change the value, then click the Save button.
Global level Business Hours definition format
Mo_00:00-24:00;Tu_00:00-24:00;We_00:00-24:00;Th_00:00-24:00;Fr_00:00-24:00;Sa_00:00-24:00;Su_00:00-24:00
You can leave the global level business hours definition on its default setting shown above – open 24/7 – and rely on the Dialing Rule level configuration.
When the global level business hours periods are set to a non default value – so they are not open 24/7 – and a call arrives outside of these, then the Out of Business Hours Messages are getting played to the caller.
Configure Dialing Rule Level Opening Hours
- Log on to the CE portal.
- Navigate to the Operations → Workflows → Dialing Rules form and click Edit in the designated Dialing Rule row defined for your specific Tenant.
- Click the Active Daily Periods tab and change the time periods.
- Click Submit at the bottom of the form.
When a call arrives inside the Global level business hours, but outside of the affected Dialing Rule periods, then the Redirect Messages are getting played to the caller.