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How to play a different greeting over the festive period in Microsoft Teams Phone

1 November 2022

Cloud Telephony & Connectivity

Summary

Typically, you’ll have a main number for your business, and you’ll play a welcome or greeting message, depending upon whether your offices are open or closed.

When it comes to Christmas, you may have a company wide shut down between Christmas and New Year or have different opening hours. This could result in your normal “Closed Greeting” is no longer giving the correct information.

The solution is to schedule a special festive greeting to be played automatically between the dates that you choose. This can all be setup in advance and automatically revert to your normal greeting at a time of your choosing.

How do I do this?

Step 1 – Agree the dates and your special festive greeting wording

Example: The Company Blue Sky will close early on Friday 23rd December at 1pm and remain closed until normal opening times resume on Tuesday 3rd January 2023.

During this time, a special festive closed greeting can be played, instead of the normal Mon to Fri closed message

Step 2 – Record the new festive greeting

Use any recording method available to you to record the new greeting and save.

NOTE: Microsoft Teams Phone accepts the following file formats; MP3, WAV and WMA. Files must be no more than 5mb in size.

Example Festive Greeting “Thank you for calling Blue Sky. We wish you the very best of seasonal greetings and look forward to hearing from you when we re-open on Tuesday 3rd of January. Thank you and Goodbye.”

Step 3 – Add the Shut Down period as a Holiday
  • From the left-hand Menu, select Voice and then Holidays
  • Click on Add
  • Enter a name for the holiday, such as “Xmas Shut down 2022”.
  • Enter a Start time, such as “23/12/2022 with a time of 1:00PM.
  • Enter an End time, such as “03/01/2023 with a time of 12:00AM.
Microsoft Teams Phone Festive Greeting
  • Press Save.
Step 4 – Add the Holiday to the Auto Attendant
  • From the left-hand Menu, select Voice and then Auto Attendant.
  • A list of current Auto Attendants is displayed.  If the name of the Auto attendant isn’t obvious you can click on each one, and the corresponding number is displayed.
  • In this example our Auto Attendant is called BlueSky Main AA.
  • Click on “Call flows during holidays“.
Auto attendant in Microsoft Teams Phone
  • Click on Add.
Holiday call settings in Microsoft Teams Phone
  • Enter a name for the Holiday, such as “Xmas Shut down 2022″.
  • From the drop down list select the holiday we created in Step 3.
  • For Greeting either select “Play an audio file” and then browse to your recorded greeting, or if you wanted to use the inbuilt text to speech engine select “Add a greeting message” and then just type out your message.

TIP: If you decide to use text to speech, you can experiment with punctuation, returns and capitals to change the timing and emphasis when the message is played.

  • Against “Call routing options” select Disconnect as there is no option for the caller to leave a message.
Call routing options in MS Teams Phone
  • Press Save.
Adding a greeting message in MS Teams phone
  • Press Submit.

That’s it! – during the company shutdown period this message will be played to anyone calling the number shown against the Auto Attendant and automatically revert to the normal greeting on the morning of Tuesday 3rd January 2023.

Would you like to use a professional voice over artist instead?

You may currently be using a member of staff to record your phone system greetings, however there are benefits to using a professional voice over artist.

We have partnered with the leading Voice Prompt company, so you can have professionally recorded voice prompts, music on hold and in queue messages.

There is a wide range of voices and royalty free music (hold tracks), to help you create and mix your own prompts.

If you are interested in learning more about this option please contact our Sales team who will be happy help.

If your Microsoft Teams Phone system is managed by GCC

If your Microsoft Teams Phone system is managed by GCC and you need assistance setting up your ‘Festive Greeting’ contact the support team who can guide you through the process.

You’ll still need to agree the dates, the specific wording and record the greeting if you’re not using a professional voice over service.

Further Information

If you have any questions about this or need assistance, then please contact the GCC Group Support Team on 0345 260 1151 or servicedesk@gccgroup.co.uk