How to set up holiday greetings and change your office-hour rules for the holidays.

Overview:

This article will show you how to change your office hours/after-hours rules for the holidays.

It includes the following sections:

• Setting up holiday/vacation hours if your business is closed.
• Setting up holiday/vacation hours with skeleton staffing.
• Important notes when setting up holiday/vacation office hours.

Setting up a greeting and holiday/vacation hours if your business is closing for the holidays:

1. Create a NEW office hours rule for the holiday period.
2. Toggle every day to OFF.
3. Record a new holiday message for your customers and set this as the After Hours Greeting for your new office hours rule.
4. For help recording a new greeting, follow the instructions in this article.
5. Next, scroll to ‘What team is responsible for after-hours messages’ and select a team to receive notifications of after-hours messages. 
   • Members of this team will only receive notifications if they are set to available or busy in the Spoke app. 
   • To ensure no one gets offered work calls during the holidays, choose a team that is set to 'send to voicemail' if no one picks up. 
6. On your last day in the office before you go on holiday, toggle the new office hours rule ON.
7. When you return to the office after the holiday period, toggle your normal office hours rule back ON.

Setting up a greeting and holiday/vacation hours with skeleton staffing

1. Create a NEW office hours rule for the holiday period.
2. Toggle every day to OFF.
3. Record a new holiday message for your customers and set this as the After Hours Greeting for your new office hours rule.
   • When recording your new message, inform customers that you are operating on a skeleton crew until XX date. You could ask them to hold for any urgent inquiries, or hang up and send an email if their inquiry is not urgent. 
   • For help recording a new greeting, follow the instructions in this article.
4. Next, scroll to What team is responsible for after-hours messages and select the reception/main team. 
5. Save your new holiday office hours rule. 
6. Create and configure a new team for your skeleton crew; add any staff who will be responsible for taking urgent calls over the holiday period. 
7. On your last day in the office before you go on holiday complete the following tasks:
   • Edit your reception/main team. Scroll to What happens if no one picks up and change this to Send to another Team, then select the new team you made for your skeleton crew.
   • Go to Manage Office Hours and toggle your holiday office hours rule ON.
   • Remind everyone in the holiday skeleton crew team to check and adjust their automated offline hours in the mobile app. After hours calls will only ring on their phones if their status is ‘Available’.
8. When you return to the office after the holiday period, reverse the changes you made to your reception/main team in Step 7, then toggle your normal office hours rule ON.
9. Remind your team to check their automated offline hours in the mobile app and adjust if necessary. 

Important notes when setting up holiday/vacation office hours

Office hour rules do not apply to any phone numbers which have been assigned to a specific user, team, or location. The office hour rules will only apply to phone numbers assigned to ‘All Locations’. 

To see how your phone numbers are assigned, log in to the account portal and navigate to ‘Manage Phone Numbers’. If you have phone numbers assigned to teams, we recommend recording a holiday voicemail message and uploading this to any of your teams with an assigned phone number. 

Before going on holiday, remind your team to set their vacation dates in the Spoke Phone app to ensure they don’t get calls during the holiday period.