Frequently Asked Question

When setting up FreePBX, businesses need to have a way of controlling inbound calls outside of office hours, we do this by having two time conditions, one, which sets your normal 8-5, or 9-5 Mon-Fri, maybe Saturday mornings, then the system knows to let inbound calls through and when to give them the after hours message, that's common, and very easy to set up.

But what throws a spanner in the works is holidays, the PBX doesn't know your never going to be there on say a Tuesday that's December 25, or any other public holiday, or even other days over Christmas when most industries shut down for two weeks or more, this is where the second timegroup comes in for Holidays, it accounts for year round, the only time there needs to be a change is if your country honours what we in Australia call Easter, as there is no absolute fixed date, it varies from late March to end of April each year, and there's no movement direction or by number of weeks, so this will generally require you to edit each year, my recommendation is that you change the dates for the following year, immediately upon return from the current years, that way you wont ever forget :)

To make it simple, I have included my own timegroup.csv file you can download from the top right side of this article and import into FreePBX via Bulk Handler, you'll need to check all the entries and modify to suite for your area after importing, for instance, my office is in the shire of the City of Moreton Bay, so the holidays are for this area, if you're in Brisbane or any other part of Queensland at least, you only need to check the Easter segment, and, modify your areas Show Day public holiday, they always fall within the dates listed you only need change the day of the week, in Moreton Bay, it's Monday, if you're in Brisbane, you'll need to change Monday to Wednesday. 

If you're not in Queensland, you'll need to figure out your own show date periods, and you may also not get the following Monday off if a public holidays falls on a weekend like Qld does, so you'll need to check for those too!  I really can't help you if you're not in Queensland, but your local government should be able to provide any information applicable to you.

As a helping hand if you've not used FreePBX's Bulk Handler, this is an extract of an update I've just added to an old blog article for adding holidays - this used to be only able to be done by hand, entry by entry, there was no quick import ability until recently.

In conjunction with this article, FreePBX 16 and 17 users can now quickly add all the time groups entries by and going to Admin->Bulk Handler, click IMPORT, then Timeroups, select the CSV file BROWSE and select the timegroups,csv file you just downloaded, next click on submit, then import, this will populate the timegroups, next, before you click Apply Config, go to Applications->Time Groups, then Holidays and view or edit to make any local changes if you need to, once done, click Apply Config.