How to perform Conditional Time-Of-Day transfers in UCXN

We've seen how to do Time-of-Day call transfers on the Call Manager, but it's also possible to do it in Unity Connection as well, with or without greetings & with or without Caller Input. Advantages of building this in Unity Connection is the absolute simplicity of design, without the cumbersome hassle of creating specific time schedules, partitions and CSS on the call manager. Your transfer schedules (in Unity Connection) can contain multiple standard/closed transitions per day (i.e., the lunch hour) as well as support different schedules on different days of the week. Interestingly this ability is not discussed in any Unity Connection training course nor documented in any Cisco Press publication I've been able to find. Here's how to do it: (UCXN 8.X)

For our example we'll use three extensions: ext. 5000 (the main number callers dial), ext. 5001 (the business day "Standard" call destination) and ext 5002 (the nighttime "Closed" call destination point.

1) Start by creating a CTI Route Point for Ext 5000 on the Call Manager, then set this to forward always to Voice Mail (Unity Connection)

2) In Unity Connection we start by creating a new system call handler, give it an intuitively descriptive name, such as "Ext 5000 Conditional Transfer" and place 5000 in the extension field. Don't worry about the schedule for now. We'll come back to this.

3. Now go to the Transfer Rules screen. Here we want to enable the Standard and the Closed transfer rules and program our two desired transfer destinations in them (5001 and 5002 respectively). Make sure that the Alternate Transfer Rule is disabled (very important). While inside both the Standard and Closed transfer rules we need to set them both as enabled and place a check alongside "Release to Switch". You may or may not want to also put a check mark alongside the "Play wait while I transfer your call" message. Here I usually do not use it for my Standard (days) transfer, but will often use it for the after hours (closed) or any external transfer. Note that transfers can go to internal or external numbers, or be directed to another call handler or mailbox

4. Now go to the Greetings screen. For the Standard greeting we need to select "Enabled with no end date", also select "Caller hears nothing" then select "Allow transfers to numbers not associated with users or call handlers". Leave the "Prompt" settings at their default values. Under the After Greeting heading we need to select "Call Handler" and then use the down arrow to select this same call handler that we are building. In other words, we want to point it back to itself and then place a check mark alongside "Attempt transfer" (these are both critical settings). Contrary to how it may appear, this does not put the call handler into an endless loop.

5. Repeat all of the above steps for the Closed greeting, making sure to select "Enabled with no end date", select "Caller hears nothing", then select "Allow transfers to numbers not associated with users or call handlers". Leave the "Prompt" settings at their default values. Once again under the After Greeting heading we need to select "Call Handler" and then use the down arrow to find and select this same call handler that we are currently building. Just as in step 4, we again want to redirect it back to itself and place the check mark alongside "Attempt transfer".

6. Make sure that the Alternate Greeting is disabled. There is also no Post Greeting. Leave these settings at their default values. Similarly we leave the Default Message Settings at their default settings. There are also no owners needed (since there are no recordings required).

7. Finally go back to our Call Handler Basics screen and choose the schedule that we want to use (you may have to create one with the days and times that you need).

That's all there is to it!