The holidays have rolled around again and it's time to swap over your normal Zendesk Talk greetings with custom holiday versions for your company's closure period. Follow our easy set-up guide below to get this in place before the holidays begin so you can sit back, relax and enjoy. 

Things to note:

• The Schedules feature is available on Professional or Enterprise Plans only
• If you do not have access to the schedule feature, you can still set up a new holiday greeting and swap your existing voicemail greeting with it temporarily during your closure period

Upon your return from holidays, don't forget to revert these temporary changes back to normal! We recommend setting a reminder on your calendar. 📅

Setting up your schedule

The key to this configuration is making sure you have an existing Schedule created inside your Zendesk, and valid (not expired) public holidays/closure periods added to the Holidays section.

1. Navigate to Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Schedules.
2. Ensure you have a Schedule set up with business hours applied and holidays added. 
3. For further information see: Setting your schedule with business hours and holidays

Enabling Business Hours in Talk

Now that we've confirmed our schedule is enabled with active holidays, we need to verify that it is set against each individual number inside Talk. 

1. In Admin Center, click the Channels icon () in the sidebar, then select Talk and email > Talk.
2. Select the Lines tab
3. Next to the number you want to add a greeting for, click the menu icon (), then choose Edit.
4. In the Routing tab and verify that your schedule is selected in the drop-down menu for the Business Hours setting.
5. Click Save Changes (if you make an update the button will appear in blue to save the changes).

Upload your greeting

We will now upload the custom holiday greeting(s) which you would like customers to hear when they call you. 

1. In Admin Center, click the Channels icon () in the sidebar, then select Talk and email > Talk.
2. Select the Greetings tab.
3. Click the blue Add greeting button.
4. Fill in the details & upload the greeting recording. Be sure to set Greeting Type to Voicemail. 
5. Click Save.

Assigning the greeting to your numbers individually

The last piece to the puzzle. Here we will change over your existing voicemail greeting, to the new holiday greeting temporarily. 

1. In Admin Center, click the Channels icon () in the sidebar, then select Talk and email > Talk.
2. Select the Lines tab
3. Next to the number you want to add a greeting for, click the menu icon (), then choose Edit.
4. In the Voicemail tab, scroll to the Outside Schedule section.
5. Ensure Voicemail is Enabled & select the holiday greeting from the drop-down list.
6. Click Save changes.

OPTIONAL: Add a calendar reminder

We recommend that you add a reminder to your calendar which will promopt you to update the Talk greetings back to the original greeting when you return back to work.