The business schedules divides the 24-hour day into three parts called day service, night service, and alternate service.
Calls can be routed to one mailbox for day service and to another for night service. A business may, for example, set day-service hours to be the period when the business is open, and it may send calls to a night-service mailbox during the remaining hours and on weekends.
Since 4 business schedules are available to you, you can use both arrangements as necessary for differing purposes.
Alternate service is a period of time that you can define when calls may be sent to a third destination during either day- or night-service hours. This period may be used, for example, to provide a special automated attendant to handle calls from other time zones during the transition from day to night service. Alternate service can also be used to cover for an operator during the lunch hour.
Holiday schedules make it possible to deviate from the normal business schedule for a day at a time. You might use these schedules to play different greetings and to handle calls differently on holidays. There are four holiday schedules. On each of them, you can record up to 26 dates along with the automated attendant mailbox to be used on each date. If you have separate schedules for the sales office and for the warehouse, for example, you could send sales-office calls to one mailbox during a sales conference, and warehouse calls to another mailbox during inventory time.
The business and holiday schedules are tied together within a routing table. A routing table applies the schedules to an incoming called number such as an incoming trunk or covered extension. You administer the routing table so that the automated attendant extension you want to handle the calls at the various times is also tied with the appropriate schedule.
When a caller dials a number that appears in the leftmost column of the routing table, for example on the Auto-Attendant Routing Table screen, the holiday schedule is checked first. If the current date does not appear in the holiday schedule, the business schedule is checked. If the time of day is covered in the business schedule under alternate service, the call is sent to the alternate service mailbox. If not, then depending on the time of day, the call is sent to the day-service or to the night-service mailbox.