We are in the process of migrating from PureConnect to Genesys Cloud and I have been rebuilding all of our IVR flows in Architect. One critical flow that I cannot get working correctly is our emergency closure announcement.
The setup: We have a Schedule Group called “Business Hours” that contains our regular schedule (Mon-Fri 09:00-18:00 JST) and an Emergency Schedule that can be toggled on/off via the admin UI. When the Emergency Schedule is active, the flow should play a recorded closure announcement and disconnect.
In my Architect inbound call flow, I have a “Check Schedule” action at the very top that evaluates the Schedule Group. The logic is:
- If schedule = “Emergency” → Play closure message → Disconnect
- If schedule = “Open” → Route to queue
- If schedule = “Closed” → Play after-hours message → Voicemail
The problem is that when I activate the Emergency Schedule in Admin > Routing > Schedules, the flow completely ignores it. Calls during business hours still route to the queue as if the emergency schedule does not exist. The regular open/closed logic works perfectly - it is only the emergency schedule that is being bypassed.
I have verified the Emergency Schedule is listed in the Schedule Group. I have verified the schedule is toggled to “Active” in the admin panel. What am I missing?
Ugh, this one got me too when I was setting up our outbound campaign blackout schedules. The issue is schedule PRIORITY within the Schedule Group.
Genesys Cloud evaluates schedules within a Schedule Group in priority order, and it returns the FIRST matching schedule. Your regular business hours schedule (Mon-Fri 09:00-18:00) is matching first because it is higher priority in the group, and the evaluation stops there. It never gets to the emergency schedule.
The fix: Go to Admin > Routing > Schedule Groups, edit your group, and drag the Emergency Schedule ABOVE the regular business hours schedule in the list. The list order IS the priority order, even though the UI does not label it that way.
When the emergency schedule is active AND the current time falls within a regular business hour, the emergency schedule needs to be evaluated first to take precedence. When the emergency schedule is toggled off, it will not match, and the evaluator falls through to the next schedule in the list (your regular hours).
Priority order is the answer. Two additional things to check:
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The Emergency Schedule must have a time range that covers the period you want to override. A common mistake is creating an emergency schedule with no time range defined, assuming “active” means “always applies.” It does not. The schedule must have at least one recurrence rule. For an all-day emergency closure, set the recurrence to the specific date with a 00:00-23:59 time range.
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After reordering schedules in the group, you do not need to republish the Architect flow. The Schedule Group evaluation happens at runtime, not at flow publish time. But there is a cache TTL of up to 60 seconds on schedule evaluations. If you activate the emergency schedule and immediately test a call, it might still route normally. Wait 60 seconds and test again.