One of the first things you’ll do when setting up a new PBX is configure opening and closing hours. This often also includes some simple rules to define what should happen to a call at certain times. For example, forwarding the call to an IVR menu or queue during open hours, or to voicemail with a personalized greeting message during closing hours.
Configuring office hours is easy. Simply log into the control panel and click on “Settings > Timezone, Office Hours & Holidays”.
You can easily set the office hours by clicking on “Configure” under each day of the week. You can even add in break times separately to ensure that any absence from the office is covered.
What’s more, you can add in each individual holiday and set specific office hours for those days too. This means that you don’t need to remember to come in each time before a holiday to manually change the hours set for that day.
Setting up Call Routing
Once the working hours have been specified, it’s time to set your Inbound Rules so that incoming calls can be correctly routed.
In just a few clicks, basic call routing can be set up. But what if we told you that you can get a lot more out of 3CX?
In fact, it’s possible to choose to automatically sort multiple incoming calls, differentiating the behavior based on various time slots and / or based on the day of the week.
The first step involves creating a support extension (EXTENSIONS > ADD). This extension will not be provisioned to any softphone or IP phone. From the “Forwarding Rules” tab of the new extension, you must enter where you want the call to be forwarded when the extension is not registered (for example, the main voice responder).
Once this is done, you can add the desired rules in the “Exceptions” section within the “Forwarding Rules” tab. For example, calls could be forwarded to a specific extension between 9:00 am and 13:00 pm on certain days of the week and to a different extension in the same time slot on other days of the week. In all remaining time slots during office hours, calls will be diverted to the default behavior chosen for the extension. It is important to remember to insert the symbol * in the “Calls From Caller ID” field to indicate that the rule applies to any incoming call.
In “Inbound rules” you can create rules to route calls based on DID or caller ID.
From now on, your calls will be handled by 3CX automatically! It’s with these simple yet intuitive customizations that you can really tailor the phone system to work exactly as your business needs it.
Posted on December 10th, 2020 by Alessio Valenti, Administrator, Info-Service s.r.l
Info-Service s.r.l is a 3CX Gold Partner based in Sicily, Italy. To discuss 3CX VoIP systems and IT solutions, please get in touch: https://www.centralino.eu/
Sourced from: 3CX Blog. View the original article here.
