How to turn on and off afterhours call auto attendant.

Question

How to turn on and off afterhours call auto attendant.

Mckellar, Jeremy - FS, AK 0

We work in a dispatch shop supporting wild fire, our hours depend on the field activity. Some nights we close at 1600 other nights 2300. Some weekends we are open some we don't it depends on fire activity.

We need a way our agents can toggle on and off the after hours auto attendant.

If they have to work late and the system starts sending calls to the on call dispatcher while they are still at the office this is a bit safety problem for us.

Other times if we get a fire on a weekend the person opening the office needs to be able to toggle off the after hours attendant so calls go to the agent not the answering service.

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Answer 1

Jay1 Tran 1,700 Independent Advisor

Hi Jeremy,

Thank you for reaching out.

A dedicated After Hours On/Off switch is not currently available in Microsoft Teams. The supported alternative is to assign selected dispatchers as Authorized users, allowing them to change the Auto Attendant’s business hours and routing without giving them full administrative access.

This means the process would work as follows:

When working late: The authorized dispatcher extends the business hours so calls continue routing to the agents in the office.
When opening on a weekend: The dispatcher enables business hours for that day so calls are routed to the office rather than the answering service.
When closing the office: The dispatcher restores the appropriate schedule so the after-hours call flow redirects calls to the on-call dispatcher or answering service.

An IT administrator must first create and assign a voice applications policy, add the selected dispatchers as Authorized users for the Auto Attendant, and provide access to the Queues app. After the setup is completed, the authorized dispatchers can manage the hours and call flows from the calls settings in Teams.

For guidance on how to set up in the Teams admin center, your IT admin may refer to: Setup - Authorized Users - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

In case you do not know who is your IT admin, kindly refer to this article: How do I find my Microsoft 365 admin? - Microsoft Support

For detailed steps on how to manage after hours in Teams, please review this document: Manage your call queue and auto attendant settings in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Support

I hope the information I shared earlier was somewhat helpful in addressing your issue. Please keep me posted on any updates.

Jay1 Tran 1,700 Reputation points Independent Advisor

2026-09-22T21:57:49.04+00:00

Hi Jeremy,

Have you had a chance to review the information provided? Any updates would be greatly appreciated.
Mckellar, Jeremy - FS, AK 0 Reputation points

2026-09-22T22:33:22+00:00

Yes I did. I have accepted that Teams phones do not have the capability replace the phone system we had where any dispatcher could forward/unforwarded the phones and change the nnumber any give time. We will have to figure out how to re-arrange our work flow, or train the fire crews to use a different after hours number when the official one isn't working.

We bring in visiting dispatchers from other agencies who sometimes need to adjust the time or number things forward too. There is just no way to license and train every current and future dispatcher to be able to edit the work flows. And even if we could we don't necessarily want every one of them to have the full access.

The reality is every time we get some "upgrade" to our communications system with fancy bells and whistles, we loose a basic feature we used often.
Jay1 Tran 1,700 Reputation points Independent Advisor

2026-09-22T22:50:15.75+00:00

Hi Jeremy,

Thank you for explaining the operational impact this limitation has on your dispatch team.

Requiring every current and visiting dispatcher to be licensed, trained, and granted broader access is clearly not a practical replacement for the forwarding capability available in your previous phone system.

Since Teams Phone does not currently provide the same level of simple, limited forwarding control, I recommend submitting this feedback through the Microsoft Feedback Portal.

This allows Microsoft’s product team to review the request and understand how this missing feature affects real-world dispatch operations.

Thank you again for your time and for raising this important usability concern. If you have any further questions or need additional assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Wishing you a great day ahead.