How do I set up a holiday message?

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 to have Office Manager Access or a user scope that allows for the adding of Auto Attendants. Please reach out to SpectrumVoIP's Technical Support for additional assistance. 

Create 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 SpectrumVoIP Stratus Portal and select the Auto Attendant button
   
2. Select the blue 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.
4. When you select Add it should open up the screen shown below where you can configure the menu options.
5. 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
     
6. Select the Menu Prompt Manage Audio button and it will open up a sub-menu.
7. There are 3 ways to add a greeting to your auto attendant
   NOTE: Previous Recordings are not stored on the Stratus 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 give a description to your uploaded audio file
      
   3. Record - If you need to record a message you can 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.
8.  Now that we have audio for the menu we can configure the dial pad menu. In this demo, we just want to play the message then route the call to a voicemail box. We will select option 0 then select Voicemail.
9. We will type the extension of the voicemail we would like calls to route to then select the Save button to save our progress.
10. After we have saved those changes then select the gear button shown below to open up the menu options
    
11. We want to select the two drop-down menus and select follow 0. That way when the audio has finished playing, it will automatically route to the voicemail. After that, select done and save to finish the holiday menu.
    If you do not see "Follow 0" from the drop-down menu, make sure you have Saved the dial pad settings from the previous steps.

Once an auto attendant has been created or if one already exists the next step is to set up the call routing.

Set Up the Call Routing

1. To create the holiday timeframe select the Timeframe button on the top section of the web portal.
   
2.  Select the "Add Time Frame" button to create a new holiday time frame.
3.  In the menu below 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.
4. If you already have a holiday time frame created you can add additional dates by selecting the time frame then add any additional dates required.
   Utilizing this, you can create One Holiday Timeframe for all of your Holidays. 
   
   
5. After the time frame is created or edited then we will track down where calls route. You can do this by selecting the inventory button shown below.
   
6.  In the "Phone Numbers" section we can see where the main number is routed too. In this case, it is 8900 (Inbound Routing User).
7.  To get to that specific user select the Users button shown below.
   
8.  In the Users section, we will search for 8900 in the search bar. Then select the Inbound Routing User shown below.
9.  Navigate to the "Answering Rules" section to see the call routing rules. Then select the "Add Rule" button shown below.
10.  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 we created or edited above.
11.  Click Save. 
12.  You will then see the Holiday Time frame and it's rules appear 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.