Business hours routing
Business hours routing is a call routing rule that sends calls to different destinations depending on the time: to the team during opening hours, and to a message, voicemail or on-call number when the office is closed or on holidays.
How business hours routing works
The phone system keeps a schedule: the working days, the opening hours, the time zone and exceptions such as public holidays. Each call is checked against the schedule. Calls during opening hours go to the team; calls outside them go to an after-hours message, voicemail, a mobile number or an AI voice agent.
Common setups
- Closed message and voicemail — callers hear the opening hours and can leave a message.
- On-call forwarding — urgent calls go to a mobile outside hours.
- Different hours per team — support may answer longer than sales.
- Holiday exceptions — the office is treated as closed on public holidays without editing the weekly schedule.
Business hours in phone.systems™
In phone.systems™ schedules are set in Time Schedules: a title, time zone, working days, working hours and exceptions that can repeat once, monthly or yearly — useful for holidays. A schedule is used in two ways:
- In a call flow, the Time Router object splits calls into open and closed branches.
- On a user, a schedule means calls skip all of that user's contact methods outside their working hours.
See routing calls by business hours and handling after-hours calls.