Setting Up A Holiday Auto Attendant

How do I set up a holiday message on my office phone?

You can set up a holiday message using the instructions below:

There are two parts.  

1. Create The Holiday Auto Attendant 

2. Set Up the Call Routing 

You will need Office Manager Access or a user scope that allows for adding Auto Attendants. Please reach out to Axxess Networks Support for additional assistance.

The Auto Attendants icon will take you to the Auto Attendants center. Here you can Edit existing Auto Attendants, delete them, and create new ones.

Auto Attendants are interactive voice recordings allowing callers to select and route their call to their desired destination.

Creating The Holiday Auto Attendant

This first section is to create an auto attendant for the holiday message. If you already have one set up you can skip to the section on Call Routing.

1. Log into your Axxess Networks Portal and select the Auto Attendant button.
2. Select the Add Attendant button shown below to create the new holiday menu.
3. Fill out the information in the menu to create the new attendant. Make the name something you can recognize as the holiday menu, and give it an extension number that is not being used.
   • It’s good practice to keep your Auto Attendants organized by number ranges. Ex. If you have an Auto Attendant already created that is extension 7000, then the next New Auto Attendant would be created as 7001, then 7002, etc.

Important: Set the time frame to Default as we will set up the time routing later.

When you select Add, it should open up the screen shown below where you can configure the menu options.

There are two sections to add audio. The first button is the Intro Greeting.

• The Intro Greeting will play the selected audio, however, if someone presses a button the system will not respond and will keep playing the audio.
• The second button is for the Menu Prompt audio. The key difference is that when the menu prompt is playing audio and someone presses a button the system will stop the audio and route the call to the set destination immediately.

If you’re only going to have one recording, only use the Menu Prompt option.

Select the Menu Prompt Manage Audio button and it will open up a sub-menu.

There are 3 ways to add a greeting to your auto attendant:

NOTE: Previous Recordings are not stored on the Axxess Web Portal. Please make sure to download previous recordings before uploading or recording new ones.

1. Text-To-Speech – This option will allow you to type a message that will be converted to an audio file. The voice option can be selected to determine how the text-to-speech will sound. The Play Button can be used to preview the audio file.
2. Upload – If you already have a message recorded, you can select the Upload option and select the audio file saved on your computer, and select upload to save it to the menu.
   
   This will need to be a .wav or .mp3 file type. You will also need to describe your uploaded audio file.
3. Record – If you need to record a message, select the Record Button. Then in the option “Call me at” you can send a call to either an extension (3 or 4 digits) or a ten-digit telephone number to record the message through a phone. You will need to add a description to the greeting.

When you are finished with the call you can either select “Try Again” to re-do the recording or select “Done” to upload the sound to the menu.

Configuring The Dial Pad Menu

Now that you have audio for the menu, you can configure the dial pad menu.

There are several options you can choose from. For this demo, we just want to play the message and then route the call to a voicemail box. In the image below, we have selected option 0 and then selected Voicemail. Then, type the extension of the voicemail we would like calls to route to then select the Save button to save our progress.

After selecting your options and saving your changes, click on the gear button to open the menu options.

Choose your menu options from the drop-down menus, then click done to finish the holiday menu.

Set Up Call Routing

To create the holiday time frame select the Time Frames button on the top section of the web portal.

Select the “Add Time Frame” button to create a new holiday time frame.

In the new window, give the time frame name you can remember as the holiday time frame. Then select the “Specific dates or ranges” button and use the calendar tool to select the date range.

If you already have a holiday time frame created you can add additional dates by selecting the time frame and then add any additional dates required. Utilizing this, you can create One Holiday Timeframe for all of your Holidays.

After the time frame is created or edited then you will decide where calls route. You can do this by selecting the inventory button in the top menu.

Call Routing

In the “Phone Numbers” section of the Inventory, you can see where the main number is routed to. In this case, it is 8900 (Inbound Routing User).

To get to that specific user select the Users button in the top menu.

In the Users section, search for the same number you found in the inventory using the search bar. Then click to edit that User.

Navigate to the “Answering Rules” tab to see the call routing rules. Then select the “Add Rule” button shown below.

In the Add Rule window, select the drop-down for Time Frame and select the holiday time frame that was created or edited earlier.

Then check the Enabled check box to turn the rule on. Then check the Always section in Call Forwarding and search for the extension of the auto attendant you created or edited earlier.

Click Save.

You will then see the Holiday Time Frame and its rules can be found in the answering rules for the User.

You will need to make sure that the Holiday Time Frame is above the other Time Frames. The Time Frames take priority from Top to Bottom in the case of multiple time frames being active at the same time.

You can move Time Frames around by clicking and dragging the triangles on the left-hand side of the answering rules.