Genesys Cloud - Main

As a good portion of the United States is either bracing for, in the middle of, or coming out of Winter Storm Fern, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw Idea CERTNG-I-1996 (which fortunately is currently marked as 'Community Feedback Requested' instead of 'Future Consideration' or 'Will Not Implement') on your radars in hopes we can rally around improving the Emergency Group feature.

Although the "fixers" in all of us might try to build our own code, leverage data tables, or even build a plethora of "emergency schedules" for each schedule group (which has its limits), that seems a bit unnecessary if a simple "Never Ends" or "Date/Time picker" were available within the Emergency Group feature.

Those who use the Emergency Groups feature globally (for whatever reason) certainly appreciate the consideration!

#ArchitectandDesign
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
------------------------------

Brian,

Not quite sure I understand how your org uses the emergency group function today. For us, we use it in the event of a last minute emergency (power outage, water main break, ISP issue, etc). We activate the emergency group until we get an all clear that the practice is safe to return to normal phone operations. 

Outside of that, we leverage a data table where we store all of our routing information for each practice. We use a schedule group and a schedule substatus that uses a contains phrase search for certain treatment of calls, ex. (Meeting, Lunch, etc), we also capture whether the status is open, closed, or holiday. We then append that "reason" to the DID to perform our data table lookup, this allows us the flexibility to define how we want different situations to be handled and schedule them.

------------------------------
Tyler Merk
NA Bon Secours Mercy Health
tmerk@mercy.com

Original Message:
Sent: 01-26-2026 08:39
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

As a good portion of the United States is either bracing for, in the middle of, or coming out of Winter Storm Fern, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw Idea CERTNG-I-1996 (which fortunately is currently marked as 'Community Feedback Requested' instead of 'Future Consideration' or 'Will Not Implement') on your radars in hopes we can rally around improving the Emergency Group feature.

Although the "fixers" in all of us might try to build our own code, leverage data tables, or even build a plethora of "emergency schedules" for each schedule group (which has its limits), that seems a bit unnecessary if a simple "Never Ends" or "Date/Time picker" were available within the Emergency Group feature.

Those who use the Emergency Groups feature globally (for whatever reason) certainly appreciate the consideration!

#ArchitectandDesign
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
------------------------------

Fair question @Tyler Merk, and yes, your use of Emergency Groups is like most of ours, except when the lines need to be down and follow the emergency flow for an extended period of time. Given we have a plethora of lines of business that don't all follow a single schedule, schedule groups, etc, we do very similar things with respect to data table lookups and schedule group checks for normal operations; however, those capabilities require some advanced programming (which some of us are blessed to have access to), become hard/tedious to manage at scale for exception events, and even have their limits (e.g. you can only create so many schedules/schedule groups/table entries even after having the limits increased.)

The point of the idea I referenced above is to simply offer a date/timestamp feature on the emergency group so admins/ops leaders don't have to log back into Genesys at random times of day or after hours to find the emergency group and deactivate it, especially if they knew when they planned to end the emergency. For example, when we were activating the emergency group for the hundreds of clinics across America impacted by the storm, most of them said they would be ready to today or tomorrow. It would've been nice when activating those (i.e. already in the feature) or if we went back into them after activating them, if we could specify an end date/time for those sites that specified one. Otherwise, yes, the Emergency Groups are nothing more than a kill switch we have to go back into at whatever time of day/night to deactivate.

To my earlier point and yours, yes we could build tables, special flows, and some form of weather related schedules, but why do that when we literally have the Emergency Group. The addition of a "specify start/end date/time" or "always on" feature would truly round out the Emergency Group feature. Seems like a fair ask for Genesys to consider, especially for those not as talented/resourceful as you & others to build something custom for emergency situations.

Brian,

Not quite sure I understand how your org uses the emergency group function today. For us, we use it in the event of a last minute emergency (power outage, water main break, ISP issue, etc). We activate the emergency group until we get an all clear that the practice is safe to return to normal phone operations. 

Outside of that, we leverage a data table where we store all of our routing information for each practice. We use a schedule group and a schedule substatus that uses a contains phrase search for certain treatment of calls, ex. (Meeting, Lunch, etc), we also capture whether the status is open, closed, or holiday. We then append that "reason" to the DID to perform our data table lookup, this allows us the flexibility to define how we want different situations to be handled and schedule them.

As a good portion of the United States is either bracing for, in the middle of, or coming out of Winter Storm Fern, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw Idea CERTNG-I-1996 (which fortunately is currently marked as 'Community Feedback Requested' instead of 'Future Consideration' or 'Will Not Implement') on your radars in hopes we can rally around improving the Emergency Group feature.

Although the "fixers" in all of us might try to build our own code, leverage data tables, or even build a plethora of "emergency schedules" for each schedule group (which has its limits), that seems a bit unnecessary if a simple "Never Ends" or "Date/Time picker" were available within the Emergency Group feature.

Those who use the Emergency Groups feature globally (for whatever reason) certainly appreciate the consideration!

#ArchitectandDesign
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
------------------------------

Hi @Brian Jones,

To have a date on Emergency Group is a good idea, but then in my view it defeats the purpose of an Emergency Group if you already know that at a specific time you will go into Emergency mode. Ideally you should be able to manage your processes such that you don't need to go into Emergency. My view is that the Emergency Group is aptly named such that it is handles an event which is a genuine Emergency due to unforeseen circumstances.

I have implemented a setup in our ORG to handle such scenarios. 
What you can do is build an IVR, which you can hide behind an existing number, and specifics of that will only be known to a few people (your admins), and within the IVR have capability to activate and deactivate an Emergency Group. Next within you customer facing IVR, where you hopefully already check the Emergency Group, you can handle the scenarios when Emergency is ON. You will need to use two API, one to check the current state of the Emergency Group and one to update the state of Emergency Group. 
With the above setup, I have build in some additional checks that only predefined personal phone numbers of a few employees can activate/deactivate and also have personalised pin's predefined by them. This ensures unauthorised persons do not get access to the hidden option.
This process works for our requirement, may not work for others.

Regards

------------------------------
Vineet Kakroo
Senior Technical Consultant

Original Message:
Sent: 01-27-2026 09:23
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

Fair question @Tyler Merk, and yes, your use of Emergency Groups is like most of ours, except when the lines need to be down and follow the emergency flow for an extended period of time. Given we have a plethora of lines of business that don't all follow a single schedule, schedule groups, etc, we do very similar things with respect to data table lookups and schedule group checks for normal operations; however, those capabilities require some advanced programming (which some of us are blessed to have access to), become hard/tedious to manage at scale for exception events, and even have their limits (e.g. you can only create so many schedules/schedule groups/table entries even after having the limits increased.)

The point of the idea I referenced above is to simply offer a date/timestamp feature on the emergency group so admins/ops leaders don't have to log back into Genesys at random times of day or after hours to find the emergency group and deactivate it, especially if they knew when they planned to end the emergency. For example, when we were activating the emergency group for the hundreds of clinics across America impacted by the storm, most of them said they would be ready to today or tomorrow. It would've been nice when activating those (i.e. already in the feature) or if we went back into them after activating them, if we could specify an end date/time for those sites that specified one. Otherwise, yes, the Emergency Groups are nothing more than a kill switch we have to go back into at whatever time of day/night to deactivate.

To my earlier point and yours, yes we could build tables, special flows, and some form of weather related schedules, but why do that when we literally have the Emergency Group. The addition of a "specify start/end date/time" or "always on" feature would truly round out the Emergency Group feature. Seems like a fair ask for Genesys to consider, especially for those not as talented/resourceful as you & others to build something custom for emergency situations.

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology

Original Message:
Sent: 01-27-2026 08:50
From: Tyler Merk
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

Brian,

Not quite sure I understand how your org uses the emergency group function today. For us, we use it in the event of a last minute emergency (power outage, water main break, ISP issue, etc). We activate the emergency group until we get an all clear that the practice is safe to return to normal phone operations. 

Outside of that, we leverage a data table where we store all of our routing information for each practice. We use a schedule group and a schedule substatus that uses a contains phrase search for certain treatment of calls, ex. (Meeting, Lunch, etc), we also capture whether the status is open, closed, or holiday. We then append that "reason" to the DID to perform our data table lookup, this allows us the flexibility to define how we want different situations to be handled and schedule them.

------------------------------
Tyler Merk
NA Bon Secours Mercy Health
tmerk@mercy.com

Original Message:
Sent: 01-26-2026 08:39
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

As a good portion of the United States is either bracing for, in the middle of, or coming out of Winter Storm Fern, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw Idea CERTNG-I-1996 (which fortunately is currently marked as 'Community Feedback Requested' instead of 'Future Consideration' or 'Will Not Implement') on your radars in hopes we can rally around improving the Emergency Group feature.

Although the "fixers" in all of us might try to build our own code, leverage data tables, or even build a plethora of "emergency schedules" for each schedule group (which has its limits), that seems a bit unnecessary if a simple "Never Ends" or "Date/Time picker" were available within the Emergency Group feature.

Those who use the Emergency Groups feature globally (for whatever reason) certainly appreciate the consideration!

#ArchitectandDesign
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
------------------------------

Greetings @Vineet Kakroo - Understand and certainly don't disagree regarding who can, why, and when to activate the Emergency Group (I probably shouldn't have put the word 'Start' in the post title). This is truly an exception situation, yes. The idea here is to add a tad bit of efficiency/convenience to the feature in an effort to reduce some of the burden during a stressful situation on admins & operational leadership across hundreds of lines of business once [especially when] they've landed on a date & time to deactivate their Emergency Group (which in our case varies by clinic across our lines of business based on their operational readiness.) Plus it takes advantage of an existing feature, thus requiring no additional coding, tables, APIs, etc.

In those situations it would be nice if we (or designated local admins) could go back in and switch an Emergency Group from an "always on" state to a "specific end date/time" ahead of time. In many cases we're having to set a reminder to deactivate later in the business day or log in later after/early before hours (like earlier for me as I try to juggle home & work stuff) to hurriedly comb through and select/multi-select the Emergency Groups to deactivate when we could've proactively & calmly done it earlier in the day when the decision was made to reopen at x date/time.

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology

Original Message:
Sent: 01-28-2026 03:28
From: Vineet Kakroo
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

Hi @Brian Jones,

To have a date on Emergency Group is a good idea, but then in my view it defeats the purpose of an Emergency Group if you already know that at a specific time you will go into Emergency mode. Ideally you should be able to manage your processes such that you don't need to go into Emergency. My view is that the Emergency Group is aptly named such that it is handles an event which is a genuine Emergency due to unforeseen circumstances.

I have implemented a setup in our ORG to handle such scenarios. 
What you can do is build an IVR, which you can hide behind an existing number, and specifics of that will only be known to a few people (your admins), and within the IVR have capability to activate and deactivate an Emergency Group. Next within you customer facing IVR, where you hopefully already check the Emergency Group, you can handle the scenarios when Emergency is ON. You will need to use two API, one to check the current state of the Emergency Group and one to update the state of Emergency Group. 
With the above setup, I have build in some additional checks that only predefined personal phone numbers of a few employees can activate/deactivate and also have personalised pin's predefined by them. This ensures unauthorised persons do not get access to the hidden option.
This process works for our requirement, may not work for others.

Regards

------------------------------
Vineet Kakroo
Senior Technical Consultant

Original Message:
Sent: 01-27-2026 09:23
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

Fair question @Tyler Merk, and yes, your use of Emergency Groups is like most of ours, except when the lines need to be down and follow the emergency flow for an extended period of time. Given we have a plethora of lines of business that don't all follow a single schedule, schedule groups, etc, we do very similar things with respect to data table lookups and schedule group checks for normal operations; however, those capabilities require some advanced programming (which some of us are blessed to have access to), become hard/tedious to manage at scale for exception events, and even have their limits (e.g. you can only create so many schedules/schedule groups/table entries even after having the limits increased.)

The point of the idea I referenced above is to simply offer a date/timestamp feature on the emergency group so admins/ops leaders don't have to log back into Genesys at random times of day or after hours to find the emergency group and deactivate it, especially if they knew when they planned to end the emergency. For example, when we were activating the emergency group for the hundreds of clinics across America impacted by the storm, most of them said they would be ready to today or tomorrow. It would've been nice when activating those (i.e. already in the feature) or if we went back into them after activating them, if we could specify an end date/time for those sites that specified one. Otherwise, yes, the Emergency Groups are nothing more than a kill switch we have to go back into at whatever time of day/night to deactivate.

To my earlier point and yours, yes we could build tables, special flows, and some form of weather related schedules, but why do that when we literally have the Emergency Group. The addition of a "specify start/end date/time" or "always on" feature would truly round out the Emergency Group feature. Seems like a fair ask for Genesys to consider, especially for those not as talented/resourceful as you & others to build something custom for emergency situations.

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology

Original Message:
Sent: 01-27-2026 08:50
From: Tyler Merk
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

Brian,

Not quite sure I understand how your org uses the emergency group function today. For us, we use it in the event of a last minute emergency (power outage, water main break, ISP issue, etc). We activate the emergency group until we get an all clear that the practice is safe to return to normal phone operations. 

Outside of that, we leverage a data table where we store all of our routing information for each practice. We use a schedule group and a schedule substatus that uses a contains phrase search for certain treatment of calls, ex. (Meeting, Lunch, etc), we also capture whether the status is open, closed, or holiday. We then append that "reason" to the DID to perform our data table lookup, this allows us the flexibility to define how we want different situations to be handled and schedule them.

------------------------------
Tyler Merk
NA Bon Secours Mercy Health
tmerk@mercy.com

Original Message:
Sent: 01-26-2026 08:39
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

As a good portion of the United States is either bracing for, in the middle of, or coming out of Winter Storm Fern, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw Idea CERTNG-I-1996 (which fortunately is currently marked as 'Community Feedback Requested' instead of 'Future Consideration' or 'Will Not Implement') on your radars in hopes we can rally around improving the Emergency Group feature.

Although the "fixers" in all of us might try to build our own code, leverage data tables, or even build a plethora of "emergency schedules" for each schedule group (which has its limits), that seems a bit unnecessary if a simple "Never Ends" or "Date/Time picker" were available within the Emergency Group feature.

Those who use the Emergency Groups feature globally (for whatever reason) certainly appreciate the consideration!

#ArchitectandDesign
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
------------------------------

Hey @Brian Jones, agree what you have said, but can I ask why you want to you Emergency Group. Why can't you create a new operating schedule say "Emergency Switch ON/Off" and add it to all operating scheduled groups under their Closed Schedules, assuming you are using Scheduled Groups inside your customer facing IVR's.
With this you can set the date/time when to start and end this special operating schedule, and it will do exactly what you want. when you don't want to use it, you set its date to past and when you want to use it in future, you set the required date.

Regards

Greetings @Vineet Kakroo - Understand and certainly don't disagree regarding who can, why, and when to activate the Emergency Group (I probably shouldn't have put the word 'Start' in the post title). This is truly an exception situation, yes. The idea here is to add a tad bit of efficiency/convenience to the feature in an effort to reduce some of the burden during a stressful situation on admins & operational leadership across hundreds of lines of business once [especially when] they've landed on a date & time to deactivate their Emergency Group (which in our case varies by clinic across our lines of business based on their operational readiness.) Plus it takes advantage of an existing feature, thus requiring no additional coding, tables, APIs, etc.

In those situations it would be nice if we (or designated local admins) could go back in and switch an Emergency Group from an "always on" state to a "specific end date/time" ahead of time. In many cases we're having to set a reminder to deactivate later in the business day or log in later after/early before hours (like earlier for me as I try to juggle home & work stuff) to hurriedly comb through and select/multi-select the Emergency Groups to deactivate when we could've proactively & calmly done it earlier in the day when the decision was made to reopen at x date/time.

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology

Original Message:
Sent: 01-28-2026 03:28
From: Vineet Kakroo
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

Hi @Brian Jones,

To have a date on Emergency Group is a good idea, but then in my view it defeats the purpose of an Emergency Group if you already know that at a specific time you will go into Emergency mode. Ideally you should be able to manage your processes such that you don't need to go into Emergency. My view is that the Emergency Group is aptly named such that it is handles an event which is a genuine Emergency due to unforeseen circumstances.

I have implemented a setup in our ORG to handle such scenarios. 
What you can do is build an IVR, which you can hide behind an existing number, and specifics of that will only be known to a few people (your admins), and within the IVR have capability to activate and deactivate an Emergency Group. Next within you customer facing IVR, where you hopefully already check the Emergency Group, you can handle the scenarios when Emergency is ON. You will need to use two API, one to check the current state of the Emergency Group and one to update the state of Emergency Group. 
With the above setup, I have build in some additional checks that only predefined personal phone numbers of a few employees can activate/deactivate and also have personalised pin's predefined by them. This ensures unauthorised persons do not get access to the hidden option.
This process works for our requirement, may not work for others.

Regards

------------------------------
Vineet Kakroo
Senior Technical Consultant

Original Message:
Sent: 01-27-2026 09:23
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

Fair question @Tyler Merk, and yes, your use of Emergency Groups is like most of ours, except when the lines need to be down and follow the emergency flow for an extended period of time. Given we have a plethora of lines of business that don't all follow a single schedule, schedule groups, etc, we do very similar things with respect to data table lookups and schedule group checks for normal operations; however, those capabilities require some advanced programming (which some of us are blessed to have access to), become hard/tedious to manage at scale for exception events, and even have their limits (e.g. you can only create so many schedules/schedule groups/table entries even after having the limits increased.)

The point of the idea I referenced above is to simply offer a date/timestamp feature on the emergency group so admins/ops leaders don't have to log back into Genesys at random times of day or after hours to find the emergency group and deactivate it, especially if they knew when they planned to end the emergency. For example, when we were activating the emergency group for the hundreds of clinics across America impacted by the storm, most of them said they would be ready to today or tomorrow. It would've been nice when activating those (i.e. already in the feature) or if we went back into them after activating them, if we could specify an end date/time for those sites that specified one. Otherwise, yes, the Emergency Groups are nothing more than a kill switch we have to go back into at whatever time of day/night to deactivate.

To my earlier point and yours, yes we could build tables, special flows, and some form of weather related schedules, but why do that when we literally have the Emergency Group. The addition of a "specify start/end date/time" or "always on" feature would truly round out the Emergency Group feature. Seems like a fair ask for Genesys to consider, especially for those not as talented/resourceful as you & others to build something custom for emergency situations.

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology

Original Message:
Sent: 01-27-2026 08:50
From: Tyler Merk
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

Brian,

Not quite sure I understand how your org uses the emergency group function today. For us, we use it in the event of a last minute emergency (power outage, water main break, ISP issue, etc). We activate the emergency group until we get an all clear that the practice is safe to return to normal phone operations. 

Outside of that, we leverage a data table where we store all of our routing information for each practice. We use a schedule group and a schedule substatus that uses a contains phrase search for certain treatment of calls, ex. (Meeting, Lunch, etc), we also capture whether the status is open, closed, or holiday. We then append that "reason" to the DID to perform our data table lookup, this allows us the flexibility to define how we want different situations to be handled and schedule them.

------------------------------
Tyler Merk
NA Bon Secours Mercy Health
tmerk@mercy.com

Original Message:
Sent: 01-26-2026 08:39
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

As a good portion of the United States is either bracing for, in the middle of, or coming out of Winter Storm Fern, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw Idea CERTNG-I-1996 (which fortunately is currently marked as 'Community Feedback Requested' instead of 'Future Consideration' or 'Will Not Implement') on your radars in hopes we can rally around improving the Emergency Group feature.

Although the "fixers" in all of us might try to build our own code, leverage data tables, or even build a plethora of "emergency schedules" for each schedule group (which has its limits), that seems a bit unnecessary if a simple "Never Ends" or "Date/Time picker" were available within the Emergency Group feature.

Those who use the Emergency Groups feature globally (for whatever reason) certainly appreciate the consideration!

#ArchitectandDesign
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
------------------------------

Fair question @Tyler Merk, and yes, your use of Emergency Groups is like most of ours, except when the lines need to be down and follow the emergency flow for an extended period of time. Given we have a plethora of lines of business that don't all follow a single schedule, schedule groups, etc, we do very similar things with respect to data table lookups and schedule group checks for normal operations; however, those capabilities require some advanced programming (which some of us are blessed to have access to), become hard/tedious to manage at scale for exception events, and even have their limits (e.g. you can only create so many schedules/schedule groups/table entries even after having the limits increased.)

The point of the idea I referenced above is to simply also offer an effective or end date/timestamp feature on the emergency group so admins/ops leaders don't have to log back into Genesys at random times of day or after hours to find the emergency group(s) to deactivate, especially if they knew when they planned to end the emergency. For example, when we were activating the emergency group for the hundreds of clinics across America impacted by the storm, most of them said they would be ready to today or tomorrow. It would've been nice when activating those (i.e. already in the feature) or if we went back into them after activating them, if we could specify an end date/time for those sites that specified one. Otherwise, yes, the Emergency Groups are nothing more than a kill switch we have to go back into at whatever time of day/night to deactivate.

To my earlier point and yours, yes we could build tables, special flows, and some form of weather related schedules, but why do that when we literally have the Emergency Group. The addition of a "specify an end date/time" or "always on" feature would truly round out the Emergency Group feature. Seems like a fair ask for Genesys to consider, especially for those not as talented/resourceful as you & others to build something custom for emergency situations.

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology

Original Message:
Sent: 01-27-2026 08:50
From: Tyler Merk
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

Brian,

Not quite sure I understand how your org uses the emergency group function today. For us, we use it in the event of a last minute emergency (power outage, water main break, ISP issue, etc). We activate the emergency group until we get an all clear that the practice is safe to return to normal phone operations. 

Outside of that, we leverage a data table where we store all of our routing information for each practice. We use a schedule group and a schedule substatus that uses a contains phrase search for certain treatment of calls, ex. (Meeting, Lunch, etc), we also capture whether the status is open, closed, or holiday. We then append that "reason" to the DID to perform our data table lookup, this allows us the flexibility to define how we want different situations to be handled and schedule them.

------------------------------
Tyler Merk
NA Bon Secours Mercy Health
tmerk@mercy.com

Original Message:
Sent: 01-26-2026 08:39
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

As a good portion of the United States is either bracing for, in the middle of, or coming out of Winter Storm Fern, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw Idea CERTNG-I-1996 (which fortunately is currently marked as 'Community Feedback Requested' instead of 'Future Consideration' or 'Will Not Implement') on your radars in hopes we can rally around improving the Emergency Group feature.

Although the "fixers" in all of us might try to build our own code, leverage data tables, or even build a plethora of "emergency schedules" for each schedule group (which has its limits), that seems a bit unnecessary if a simple "Never Ends" or "Date/Time picker" were available within the Emergency Group feature.

Those who use the Emergency Groups feature globally (for whatever reason) certainly appreciate the consideration!

#ArchitectandDesign
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
------------------------------

Fair question @Tyler Merk, and yes, your use of Emergency Groups is like most of ours, except when the lines need to be down and follow the emergency flow for an extended period of time. Given we have a plethora of lines of business that don't all follow a single schedule, schedule groups, etc, we do very similar things with respect to data table lookups and schedule group checks for normal operations; however, those capabilities require some advanced programming (which some of us are blessed to have access to), become hard/tedious to manage at scale for exception events, and even have their limits (e.g. you can only create so many schedules/schedule groups/table entries even after having the limits increased.)

The point of the idea I referenced above is to simply also offer an effective or end date/timestamp feature on the emergency group so admins/ops leaders don't have to log back into Genesys at random times of day or after hours to find the emergency group(s) to deactivate, especially if they knew when they planned to end the emergency. For example, when we were activating the emergency group for the hundreds of clinics across America impacted by the storm, most of them said they would be ready to today or tomorrow. It would've been nice when activating those (i.e. already in the feature) or if we went back into them after activating them, if we could specify an end date/time for those sites that specified one. Otherwise, yes, the Emergency Groups are nothing more than a kill switch we have to go back into at whatever time of day/night to deactivate.

To my earlier point and yours, yes we could build tables, special flows, and some form of weather related schedules, but why do that when we literally have the Emergency Group. The addition of a "specify an end date/time" or "always on" feature would truly round out the Emergency Group feature. Seems like a fair ask for Genesys to consider, especially for those not as talented/resourceful as you & others to build something custom for emergency situations.

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology

Original Message:
Sent: 01-27-2026 08:50
From: Tyler Merk
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

Brian,

Not quite sure I understand how your org uses the emergency group function today. For us, we use it in the event of a last minute emergency (power outage, water main break, ISP issue, etc). We activate the emergency group until we get an all clear that the practice is safe to return to normal phone operations. 

Outside of that, we leverage a data table where we store all of our routing information for each practice. We use a schedule group and a schedule substatus that uses a contains phrase search for certain treatment of calls, ex. (Meeting, Lunch, etc), we also capture whether the status is open, closed, or holiday. We then append that "reason" to the DID to perform our data table lookup, this allows us the flexibility to define how we want different situations to be handled and schedule them.

------------------------------
Tyler Merk
NA Bon Secours Mercy Health
tmerk@mercy.com

Original Message:
Sent: 01-26-2026 08:39
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

As a good portion of the United States is either bracing for, in the middle of, or coming out of Winter Storm Fern, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw Idea CERTNG-I-1996 (which fortunately is currently marked as 'Community Feedback Requested' instead of 'Future Consideration' or 'Will Not Implement') on your radars in hopes we can rally around improving the Emergency Group feature.

Although the "fixers" in all of us might try to build our own code, leverage data tables, or even build a plethora of "emergency schedules" for each schedule group (which has its limits), that seems a bit unnecessary if a simple "Never Ends" or "Date/Time picker" were available within the Emergency Group feature.

Those who use the Emergency Groups feature globally (for whatever reason) certainly appreciate the consideration!

#ArchitectandDesign
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
------------------------------

As a good portion of the United States is either bracing for, in the middle of, or coming out of Winter Storm Fern, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw Idea CERTNG-I-1996 (which fortunately is currently marked as 'Community Feedback Requested' instead of 'Future Consideration' or 'Will Not Implement') on your radars in hopes we can rally around improving the Emergency Group feature.

Although the "fixers" in all of us might try to build our own code, leverage data tables, or even build a plethora of "emergency schedules" for each schedule group (which has its limits), that seems a bit unnecessary if a simple "Never Ends" or "End Date/Time picker" were available within the Emergency Group feature.

Those who use the Emergency Groups feature globally (for whatever reason) certainly appreciate the consideration!

#ArchitectandDesign
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
------------------------------

Can you have a second schedule group check that is created for "Special Closed", like you probably do for the Holiday schedule, and add it into every flow so that the call looks for

1. Emergency check (If turned on routes to Emergency msg/flow, if off moves on to...)
2. Special Closed check (If turned on routes to Special Closed msg/flow, if off moves on to...)
3. Holiday Check (If turned on routes to Special Holiday msg/flow)
4. Open Hours of Operation check -> either "Open" flow or "Closed" flow, like usual. 

------------------------------
Gina Palmer
Manager, Workforce Management
Papa, Inc.

Original Message:
Sent: 01-26-2026 08:39
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

As a good portion of the United States is either bracing for, in the middle of, or coming out of Winter Storm Fern, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw Idea CERTNG-I-1996 (which fortunately is currently marked as 'Community Feedback Requested' instead of 'Future Consideration' or 'Will Not Implement') on your radars in hopes we can rally around improving the Emergency Group feature.

Although the "fixers" in all of us might try to build our own code, leverage data tables, or even build a plethora of "emergency schedules" for each schedule group (which has its limits), that seems a bit unnecessary if a simple "Never Ends" or "End Date/Time picker" were available within the Emergency Group feature.

Those who use the Emergency Groups feature globally (for whatever reason) certainly appreciate the consideration!

#ArchitectandDesign
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
------------------------------

Greetings @Gina Palmer:

Definitely a neat idea, which we've incorporated in part for meetings/lunch type situations. However,  that circles back to the same issue I raised above, which is as a multi-tenant environment we must then create a specific Special Schedule Group with even more specific Special (Emergency) Closed schedules for the specific sites that honored their desired emergency deactivation time. In other words, we'd need to create a bunch more operating schedules to accommodate the individual clinic's emergency deactivation needs. Furthermore, we cannot set a single schedule check that will meet everyone's needs (e.g. we had sites across the nation asking us to reopen their sites at all kinds of times throughout the day yesterday & today, so we had to set reminders to go deactivate the individual Emergency Groups before, during, and after hours so the lines were ready when their reopen time came.)

Our thought was to enhance an existing feature (Emergency Groups) by adding a date/time stamp option as an alternative to the activate/deactivate switch. That way multi-tenant sites like ours are not jumping through all of the programmatic hoops or pushing the operating schedule count limit to accomplish the same goal. Yes, we can program something similar to what everyone has suggested, but it'll push our operating schedule count closer to the max as we continue to grow our footprint. It also seems unnecessary if we already have something that could essentially do the same thing if enhanced a tad. Plus it would make it easier on those sites that don't have the resources everyone here has suggested to build something custom.

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology

Original Message:
Sent: 01-28-2026 09:36
From: Gina Palmer
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

Can you have a second schedule group check that is created for "Special Closed", like you probably do for the Holiday schedule, and add it into every flow so that the call looks for

1. Emergency check (If turned on routes to Emergency msg/flow, if off moves on to...)
2. Special Closed check (If turned on routes to Special Closed msg/flow, if off moves on to...)
3. Holiday Check (If turned on routes to Special Holiday msg/flow)
4. Open Hours of Operation check -> either "Open" flow or "Closed" flow, like usual. 

------------------------------
Gina Palmer
Manager, Workforce Management
Papa, Inc.

Original Message:
Sent: 01-26-2026 08:39
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

As a good portion of the United States is either bracing for, in the middle of, or coming out of Winter Storm Fern, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw Idea CERTNG-I-1996 (which fortunately is currently marked as 'Community Feedback Requested' instead of 'Future Consideration' or 'Will Not Implement') on your radars in hopes we can rally around improving the Emergency Group feature.

Although the "fixers" in all of us might try to build our own code, leverage data tables, or even build a plethora of "emergency schedules" for each schedule group (which has its limits), that seems a bit unnecessary if a simple "Never Ends" or "End Date/Time picker" were available within the Emergency Group feature.

Those who use the Emergency Groups feature globally (for whatever reason) certainly appreciate the consideration!

#ArchitectandDesign
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
------------------------------

Hi @Brian Jones,
Frankly it must be just me, but I am still not able to get my head round how your setup is that can't be used any other way but needs a date/time on emergency group. It seems to me you are trying to plan an emergency rather than schedule a closure. Even if we had a date/time added to emergency groups, if the emergency extended, someone will still need to login and extend that date/time, which is no better that having a schedule do it for you.
Your setup looks quite complex and I setup/support 8 Genesys ORG's across globe, and none of them is as complex.

Regards

Greetings @Gina Palmer:

Definitely a neat idea, which we've incorporated in part for meetings/lunch type situations. However,  that circles back to the same issue I raised above, which is as a multi-tenant environment we must then create a specific Special Schedule Group with even more specific Special (Emergency) Closed schedules for the specific sites that honored their desired emergency deactivation time. In other words, we'd need to create a bunch more operating schedules to accommodate the individual clinic's emergency deactivation needs. Furthermore, we cannot set a single schedule check that will meet everyone's needs (e.g. we had sites across the nation asking us to reopen their sites at all kinds of times throughout the day yesterday & today, so we had to set reminders to go deactivate the individual Emergency Groups before, during, and after hours so the lines were ready when their reopen time came.)

Our thought was to enhance an existing feature (Emergency Groups) by adding a date/time stamp option as an alternative to the activate/deactivate switch. That way multi-tenant sites like ours are not jumping through all of the programmatic hoops or pushing the operating schedule count limit to accomplish the same goal. Yes, we can program something similar to what everyone has suggested, but it'll push our operating schedule count closer to the max as we continue to grow our footprint. It also seems unnecessary if we already have something that could essentially do the same thing if enhanced a tad. Plus it would make it easier on those sites that don't have the resources everyone here has suggested to build something custom.

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology

Original Message:
Sent: 01-28-2026 09:36
From: Gina Palmer
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

Can you have a second schedule group check that is created for "Special Closed", like you probably do for the Holiday schedule, and add it into every flow so that the call looks for

1. Emergency check (If turned on routes to Emergency msg/flow, if off moves on to...)
2. Special Closed check (If turned on routes to Special Closed msg/flow, if off moves on to...)
3. Holiday Check (If turned on routes to Special Holiday msg/flow)
4. Open Hours of Operation check -> either "Open" flow or "Closed" flow, like usual. 

------------------------------
Gina Palmer
Manager, Workforce Management
Papa, Inc.

Original Message:
Sent: 01-26-2026 08:39
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Emergency Schedule Calendaring (Set Start/End Date & Time)

As a good portion of the United States is either bracing for, in the middle of, or coming out of Winter Storm Fern, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw Idea CERTNG-I-1996 (which fortunately is currently marked as 'Community Feedback Requested' instead of 'Future Consideration' or 'Will Not Implement') on your radars in hopes we can rally around improving the Emergency Group feature.

Although the "fixers" in all of us might try to build our own code, leverage data tables, or even build a plethora of "emergency schedules" for each schedule group (which has its limits), that seems a bit unnecessary if a simple "Never Ends" or "End Date/Time picker" were available within the Emergency Group feature.

Those who use the Emergency Groups feature globally (for whatever reason) certainly appreciate the consideration!

#ArchitectandDesign
#Routing(ACD/IVR)

------------------------------
Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
------------------------------