Genesys Cloud - Main

Good Morning!   We have a need to split a closed flow into two options based on the Schedule. Is there a way to have a logical statement that looks at a schedule & makes a decision?

Call comes in >  (logic for schedule) > After hours location is closed > Flows to third party for support.  
Call comes in > (logic for schedule) > After hours location is open >  flow to their queue.  

Thanks!
#ArchitectureandDesign

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Erin Neufeld
[BSA]
Kal Tire, LTD
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Hi Erin

We also do that sometimes. I assume we are talking about calls and not emails? Email has built-in action for evaluating a schedule in a flow, but alas, call flows don't. 

Some techniques we have tried to cope with this is:

1. Leverage Transfer to Number action (=set up a new IVR Routing with the schedule group you want to verify against, and set Open/Close paths for that route)
2. Using the Data Table functionality and set up some fields in the table that we look up with Data Table Lookup action (=set up a table that you lookup by key like "BusinessHours" and then have fields like "OpenFromHours", "ClosedFromHours", etc, that you keep up to date). 
3. Whenever possible, try to avoid these situations :)

I would recommend approach 1. Approach 2 creates another dependency you need to update, instead of just consulting your Schedule Groups.

The downside with approach 1 is:

• Use another number just for this purpose.
• Transfers to external numbers are time-costly, there are a few seconds delay when you transfer to a number or to another flow.
• Introduces complexity.

If you like Genesys to build this functionality, there is a feature request that you can vote for:
Architect - IVR Schedule Decisions Action (in-flow schedule decision) 

PS. We have tried using the API with a data action to solve this as well, but there isn't any API to send in a Schedule Group ID or name, and get back a response like "Open/Closed/Holiday". The logic to extract if what a schedule group evaluates to like that is non-trivial, according to our findings.

PPS. If you don't need the power of an entire Schedule Group (so you can have multiple Open/Close/Holiday schedules), and you are fine with just checking against a single Schedule, you might be able to create a Schedule in PureCloud, set up a Data Action against /api/v2/architect/schedules/{scheduleId} use the Call Data action route, parsing the response in Architect. We haven't tried that approach, since ours needs required the full power of a Schedule Group.

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Joel Hellman
Hi3G
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Just added my Vote for this :-)

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Matt Calton
Grove & Dean Ltd
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-17-2019 05:24
From: Joel Hellman
Subject: Schedule decisions in flow

Hi Erin

We also do that sometimes. I assume we are talking about calls and not emails? Email has built-in action for evaluating a schedule in a flow, but alas, call flows don't.

Some techniques we have tried to cope with this is:

1. Leverage Transfer to Number action (=set up a new IVR Routing with the schedule group you want to verify against, and set Open/Close paths for that route)
2. Using the Data Table functionality and set up some fields in the table that we look up with Data Table Lookup action (=set up a table that you lookup by key like "BusinessHours" and then have fields like "OpenFromHours", "ClosedFromHours", etc, that you keep up to date). 
3. Whenever possible, try to avoid these situations :)

I would recommend approach 1. Approach 2 creates another dependency you need to update, instead of just consulting your Schedule Groups.

The downside with approach 1 is:

• Use another number just for this purpose.
• Transfers to external numbers are time-costly, there are a few seconds delay when you transfer to a number or to another flow.
• Introduces complexity.

If you like Genesys to build this functionality, there is a feature request that you can vote for:
Architect - IVR Schedule Decisions Action (in-flow schedule decision)

PS. We have tried using the API with a data action to solve this as well, but there isn't any API to send in a Schedule Group ID or name, and get back a response like "Open/Closed/Holiday". The logic to extract if what a schedule group evaluates to like that is non-trivial, according to our findings.



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Joel Hellman
Hi3G
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Hi Joel, thank you for the information.  This has confirmed the work around that I drew up yesterday to get around this issue.  I did go into the link provided and voted for this as it isn't the first time we have had to do something like this in the past. (I took support over at the beginning of the year).  

I think for the intermediate solution, we will forward to a number.  Once we get through the transition pieces with the new dispatch team starting then we can go back to the open/closed flows and clean all of this other stuff up. 

thank you!

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Erin Neufeld
[Job Title]
Kal Tire, LTD
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 04-17-2019 05:24
From: Joel Hellman
Subject: Schedule decisions in flow

Hi Erin

We also do that sometimes. I assume we are talking about calls and not emails? Email has built-in action for evaluating a schedule in a flow, but alas, call flows don't.

Some techniques we have tried to cope with this is:

1. Leverage Transfer to Number action (=set up a new IVR Routing with the schedule group you want to verify against, and set Open/Close paths for that route)
2. Using the Data Table functionality and set up some fields in the table that we look up with Data Table Lookup action (=set up a table that you lookup by key like "BusinessHours" and then have fields like "OpenFromHours", "ClosedFromHours", etc, that you keep up to date). 
3. Whenever possible, try to avoid these situations :)

I would recommend approach 1. Approach 2 creates another dependency you need to update, instead of just consulting your Schedule Groups.

The downside with approach 1 is:

• Use another number just for this purpose.
• Transfers to external numbers are time-costly, there are a few seconds delay when you transfer to a number or to another flow.
• Introduces complexity.

If you like Genesys to build this functionality, there is a feature request that you can vote for:
Architect - IVR Schedule Decisions Action (in-flow schedule decision)

PS. We have tried using the API with a data action to solve this as well, but there isn't any API to send in a Schedule Group ID or name, and get back a response like "Open/Closed/Holiday". The logic to extract if what a schedule group evaluates to like that is non-trivial, according to our findings.

PPS. If you don't need the power of an entire Schedule Group (so you can have multiple Open/Close/Holiday schedules), and you are fine with just checking against a single Schedule, you might be able to create a Schedule in PureCloud, set up a Data Action against /api/v2/architect/schedules/{scheduleId} use the Call Data action route, parsing the response in Architect. We haven't tried that approach, since ours needs required the full power of a Schedule Group.

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Joel Hellman
Hi3G
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Also, Erin, since this is a fairly simple decision you can use the Schedule Group to send the calls to one flow when the logic evaluates to Open, then another flow when the Schedule Group logic evaluates to Closed.

In the Closed flow, you would have (probably) a Starting Task which evaluates the current time using a Decision action, and if the time falls within the After hours location being open transfer to that queue, and if not transfer to the third party.

You can get as complicated as you want creating your own schedule logic within the Task...but obviously keeping in mind the maintenance of it.

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George Ganahl CCXP, GCA
Principal Technology Consultant
Genesys
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