AA Holiday Schdule VS Call Queue

[ChrisbJensen1]

We are seeing that in Webex Calling Auto Attendant, the Holiday Schedule appears to reuse the After Hours menu and greetings, instead of allowing a separate Holiday greeting.

Is this expected behavior by design?

Our call flow is simple:

• an incoming call goes to our main number
• The main number lands on an Auto Attendant
  
• Callers press 1 or 2 to go to a specific Call Queue
• then from the Auto Attendant, the caller is sent to a Call Queue

Our requirement is to have:

• one greeting for normal closed hours

• a different greeting for holidays

In Control Hub, it looks like Auto Attendant only supports:

• Business Hours greeting/menu

• After Hours greeting/menu

• Holiday schedule, but no separate Holiday greeting/menu

Can you confirm:

1. whether Holiday always uses the After Hours configuration,

2. whether a separate Holiday greeting for Auto Attendant is supported,

3. and what Cisco recommends as the best workaround if separate Holiday audio is needed?

Call Queues seem to support Holiday announcements more directly, but Auto Attendant does not appear to offer the same option.

/Chris

[Nathan-Roudebush]

Hello @ChrisbJensen1,

Ya...There are a lot of little things I wish AAs would do better. I've spent most of today racking my brain on call flows. For you, the easiest thing I can recommend is the following

1. Closed AA
   1. Setup a separate AA for your regular closed message that you can forward to
   2. I use the Business Hours due to the way you have to do all hours
2. Main AA
   1. Setup Selective Call Forwarding
      1. Set your regular business hours as do not forward
      2. Set a forward rule to Every Day/All Day to go to your Closed AA
   2. Setup Holiday Schedule
   3. Due to the selective forward the only time the After Hours Greeting will get played is on Holidays.
   4. Setup your After Hours Message to be your special Holiday Greeting.

Hope this helps!

[MichaelRalston0900]

Hello @ChrisbJensen1,

Can you confirm:

1. whether Holiday always uses the After Hours configuration,

2. whether a separate Holiday greeting for Auto Attendant is supported,

3. and what Cisco recommends as the best workaround if separate Holiday audio is needed?

Call Queues seem to support Holiday announcements more directly, but Auto Attendant does not appear to offer the same option.

/Chris

---

1. You are correct. Holiday will always use the After Hours configuration as of today. 
2. There is no way to configure a separate holiday greeting for auto attendants.
3. I'm not Cisco, but an alternative I have used in the past is Mode Management. You can setup a mode called Holiday that forwards to a voicemail box or separate auto attendant(with no options configured) that has a "holiday" greeting on it. This unfortunately does require someone to then toggle it on/off from their phone. Additionally you can put a Call Queue in front of the auto attendant that has the holiday schedule on that and can play a separate message before the call even gets to the auto attendant. In normal cases, you can set the overflow to 1 second and tell it to send overflow calls to the AA. 

Unfortunately they all require an extra level of configuration to make it work "seamlessly".