Routing Incoming Calls Based on Time of Day via Incoming Call Routing Integration

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Goal

This article discusses how to route incoming calls from an Incoming Call Integration in Opsgenie based on time of day. This is useful for users who may want calls coming in during certain hours to route to 1 escalation policy, and calls coming in during other hours to route to a different escalation policy.

With alerts, this can easily be handled via Routing Rules. However incoming calls when forwarded to a team, do not follow routing rules, they follow the “default” routing rule, i.e. the “else” routing rule on the team. So we have to take a different approach to route incoming calls based on time of day.

Instructions

These instructions will go over an example where a team wants to route calls coming in during business hours to 1 escalation policy, and calls coming in after hours to route to a separate escalation policy. However these instructions can be adapted to fit any sort of use-case where incoming calls should be routed to different escalation policies based on time of day, you would just adjust the “IncomingCallRoutingSchedule” in this example to have rotations that cover the different time periods.

1. The first step is to create 2 separate escalation policies that will handle calls at different times of day. For example, a “business hours” escalation policy, and an “after hours” escalation policy. And define the steps you want the calls to follow for each escalation policy:
   
2. Next, configure an on-call schedule with 2 separate rotations. 1 rotation that covers business hours, and add the “Business Hours Calls” escalation policy as the participant of that rotation. And the 2nd rotation that covers After Hours, and add the “After Hours” escalation policy as the participant of that rotation:
   
   
3. Configure the Incoming Call Integration to forward calls to this “IncomingCallRoutingSchedule” by going into the integration settings, and setting this schedule in the “Forward calls to” field:
   
   

How it Works

1. Call comes into Incoming Call Integration Number

2. The integration forwards the call to the “IncomingCallRoutingSchedule” via the “forward call to:” field in the integration

3. Based on the time of day the call is being received, the schedule determines whether the call gets routed to the “BusinessHoursEscalation” or the “AfterHoursEscalation”

4. The steps of the escalation policy are then followed to determine the order of who the call will be forwarded to

[Pierrick Brossin]

Comment deleted by author

[Patricia Francezi]

Hi @Samir good article, saved my brain here!

I have a question - how it will reach the escalation policy depending on the time if its not possible to determine the route involved? Your screenshots for the policies are related to another schedule (not the incoming call one). Or is it related to the name of the escalation policy? 
Appreciate your help on that.

[Magnus Niemann]

Hi, thanks for the insights. I tried this, but one question remains:

How do you integrate this with a rotation on the team? Your participants in both schedules are escalations, but in our case we want to make sure that

* on "after hours", only the user-on-call gets called

* on "business hours", the user-on-call gets called and if they do not respond, the "next" user-on-call gets called

Would this mean to have a second *schedule* with just the user rotations set?