Spruce Schedules: Set Practice Hours, Holidays, and Recurring Exceptions – Spruce Health

Spruce schedules define your practice’s operating hours so auto-replies, call routing, and workflows activate at the right days / times. Utilizing schedules allows patients to receive appropriate responses when your office is closed and have urgent messages reach the right team member outside of business hours.

Introduction to Schedules

On Spruce, you can set any auto-replies or call flows (phone trees) to a schedule so that they will automatically switch to a different behavior at a designated time. The most common use for this is to set up a business hours and an after-hours call flow that will automatically switch based on the hours you set up. You can create and edit your schedules from your Spruce settings, on the web.

For example, if your business is open Monday-Thursday from 9am-5pm and on Friday from 9am-2pm, you can configure your schedules such that:

You have a business hours call flow active while you are open.
At 5pm every weekday, the after-hours call flow is automatically activated, and the business-hours phone tree takes over at 9am the next business day.
An after hours autoresponder automatically turns on at 5pm every weekday, letting people know they are messaging in after hours and have to call 911 if they are having an emergency.

Note: Schedules are only available on the Communicator level plan.

Creating a schedule

To create a schedule, navigate to the "Schedules" section in your Spruce settings and click "New Schedule". Once you label your schedule, choose your timezone, and enter your business hours, click "Save Schedule".

Important note: you do NOT NEED to create two schedules to have a business hours period and an after hours period. You only need one schedule for this, where you define what your business hours are and everything outside of those hours will be considered "After Hours".

Watch video: How to create and edit a schedule

Managing Holidays / Schedule Exceptions

As part of your schedule configuration on Spruce, you have the ability to configure holiday hours as well as one-time exceptions for any times that you know you will want to deviate from your schedule. This will allow you to configure your phone trees / auto-replies in advance of office closures.

If you are using workflow automations that reference any of your schedules, the workflow will treat holidays and one time exceptions as after hours. For example, if you have an 'After Hours Auto Reply with Urgent Button' workflow and you add a holiday period or one-time exception to your schedule, that workflow will be active during those hours, just like it is during your regular 'After Hours' schedule period.

Please note: recurring exceptions follow a different behavior from above. When a recurring exception is set, it acts as it's own 'period' in workflows and needs to be specifically referenced in any active workflows.

Watch video: Holiday Hours / One-Time Exceptions

Who can manage your schedule?

Admins on Spruce can edit ALL schedules that are in the system, whether they were created by themselves or by a teammate. When creating a schedule, a user can choose whether a schedule can be edited by only admins (in addition to themselves) or by other teammates as well.

As a non-admin on Spruce, you will be able to view all schedules in your organization, but you will only be able to edit ones that you have been made a member of, as well as ones that you've created. As a non-admin you will be able to apply any schedule in your organization to your own number. For example if your admin creates a clinic hours schedule you can apply to your own direct phone number for auto-replies.

Watch video: In-depth overview of managing schedule permissions

Overriding your schedule

Once your schedules are set up for your call flow (phone tree) or auto-replies they will switch automatically. Occasionally, you may want to switch to after-hours earlier than your schedule designates or even turn off the schedule entirely. Within your phone number or auto-reply settings you toggle your schedule on and off.

Override: Call Flow (Phone Tree) Schedules Settings

In the event of an office emergency or disruption, you can temporarily override the current call flow schedule for a single schedule period. Once the schedule period ends, the normal schedule will resume.

For example, if your practice is closing early one day, you could apply an override to use your “After Hours” call flow, which will stay active for the remainder of the business day and until your normal “Business Hours” is set to become active the following day at its regularly scheduled time.

To apply a temporary schedule override:

Navigate to Settings > Phone System > Phone Numbers and select the phone number where you want to override the schedule.
Click the “Override” button shown to the right of the current status.
Select the call flow to use for the temporary override.

If you need to apply longer term schedule changes, turn off schedule management or edit the schedule that manages the call flow.

Override: Auto-Replies and Schedules Settings

To override the automated behavior, go to your Settings, Auto-Replies. If your auto-reply is currently applied to a schedule, you'll see an "Override" button, which allows you to override your schedule and have an auto-reply enabled when it normally wouldn't be for a temporary period of time. For example, if your practice is closing early one day, you can click "Override" and enable your After Hours auto-reply, which will stay active until your "Clinic Hours" period and the auto-reply is automatically disabled.

Watch video: Phone Trees and Schedules - Manual Override

Frequently Asked Questions

What do schedules do in Spruce?

Schedules define your office hours so auto-replies and call flows automatically adjust based on whether you are open or closed at a given day / time.

Are there options if I want to deviate from my schedule?

Yes. You can either manually override schedules or create holiday / recurring exceptions for any expected deviations.

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