Building a Business-Hours Route — Open, Closed, and Lunch
The business-hours route is the workhorse pattern of any office phone system: during open hours callers reach a menu or the front desk; outside them, an after-hours greeting and voicemail. Build it once, correctly, and holiday variants become one-line additions.
The standard pattern
- Create time conditions: "Business Hours" (e.g., Mon–Fri 8:00–17:00) — the all-times catch-all acts as after hours.
- Create the route with two condition blocks:
- Business Hours → ring the front-desk call group for ~20 seconds → terminal: daytime auto attendant (or the front-desk voicemail for menu-less offices).
- All Times (catch-all) → terminal: after-hours auto attendant or the general voicemail box, whose greeting states hours and emergency instructions.
- Point the main number at the route and test both sides of the boundary (call just before and after the hour).
Adding a lunch closure
Add a "Lunch" time condition (e.g., 12:00–13:00) above Business Hours — first match wins, so lunch intercepts midday calls → terminal: a short "we're at lunch, back at 1" prompt then voicemail or menu. Offices that answer through lunch skip this entirely.
Common mistakes
- No catch-all block — calls outside defined hours dead-end. Always end with all-times.
- Hours in the greeting contradict the schedule — when hours change, update the recording and the time condition together.
- Ring time too long before the menu — 20–25 seconds (4–5 rings) is the tolerance ceiling for most callers.
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Last reviewed August 6, 2026. Still stuck? Contact Signal Support from your portal — include what you expected, what happened instead, and one example phone number or extension.