Set business hours and call routing

Business hours tell AIVA when you're open. Call routing decides what happens to an inbound call during and outside those hours. Transfers let the assistant hand a caller to a person on your team. You set hours and routing once for the whole business (the workspace), and you can override the hours for a single assistant. Transfers are set up per assistant. You need at least one assistant with a phone number linked.

Set workspace business hours

1. In the sidebar, under AI Configuration, open AI Training.
2. Make sure Editing is set to Company-wide (all assistants).
3. Open the Business Settings tab.
4. Under Business hours & staff cost, pick your Open days, then set Opens at and Closes at.
5. Click Save.

The same panel also has Staff cost ($/hr), which powers the money-saved estimate on the Results dashboard, plus your recording and transcript retention settings. Leave staff cost blank to hide that estimate.

Choose your call routing

Below the hours, under Call routing, choose what happens to an inbound call.

During business hours

• AI answers: the assistant picks up every call.
• Ring desk phones first: your desk phones ring first, all at once. If nobody answers, the AI picks up.

If you choose Ring desk phones first, add each desk phone with a Name (for example "Front desk") and a Phone number, then click Add.

Outside business hours

• AI answers: the assistant keeps answering after hours.
• Voicemail: callers hear a message and leave a voicemail. It shows up in your call history with a follow-up task to call them back.

Click Save.

Give one assistant its own hours

If one assistant keeps different hours, for example a weekend line:

1. Open Assistants, click the assistant, and stay on the General tab.
2. In Business hours, turn off Use workspace hours.
3. Pick the Open days and set Opens at and Closes at.
4. Under Outside these hours, choose Same as workspace, AI keeps answering or Send to voicemail.
5. Click Save draft. Hours are saved straight away; you don't need to publish.

These hours use the assistant's own Timezone, set further up the General tab. To go back to the workspace hours, turn Use workspace hours back on.

Set up call transfers

Transfers let the assistant pass a caller to a real person, for example "Can I speak to someone in billing?"

Open Transfer Settings

Use any of these:

• In the Assistants list, click the transfer settings icon on the assistant's row. This opens the Transfer Settings page.
• In the assistant's General tab, under Business hours, click Escalation.
• In the assistant's editor, open the Handoff tab.

Turn on transfers

Under Call Transfer Status, turn on the switch. The status changes from Disabled to Enabled: "Call transfers are active for this assistant."

Add departments

1. Under Departments, click Add Department.
2. In Create New Department, enter a Department Name, such as Sales, Support or Billing. Callers ask for it by name, so use the word they'd say.
3. Optionally, add a Description (Optional) and Trigger phrases (optional). Trigger phrases are comma-separated, for example "refund, emergency". When a caller says something like this, even without naming the department, the AI transfers them there.
4. Click Create Department.

Add transfer numbers

1. On the department's row, click Numbers.
2. Click Add Transfer Number.
3. Choose the Code (country), enter the Phone Number (10 digits) and a Label/Name, for example "John Doe - Sales, Ext 101".
4. To ring this number only at certain times, turn on Only ring this number during certain hours, then set Available days, Available from and Available until.
5. Click Add Number.

Choose when to hand off

On the Handoff tab, under Hand off to a person when the caller…, tick the situations that should trigger a transfer:

• Asks for a person
• Sounds upset
• Asks about billing or refunds
• Mentions an emergency

These are saved with the draft, so publish the assistant afterwards. If you tick Asks for a person but haven't added any transfer number, AIVA warns you before publishing: "Callers can ask for a person, but no transfer number is set."

What happens when a transfer isn't answered

If nobody picks up, the line is busy or the call fails, the assistant comes back on the line and offers to take a message. It records the call as a message taken and creates a follow-up task so your team can call back. If the AI can't take the message, the caller can leave a voicemail instead. If the caller has already hung up, nothing more happens.

Common questions

Do my hours stop the assistant answering? Only if you choose Voicemail (or Send to voicemail for one assistant) for outside hours. With AI answers, the assistant still answers, and your hours decide which calls count as after hours in your reports.

Can I watch a transfer happen? Yes. Live calls can be monitored and transferred by hand from the Calls page. See the live calls guide below.

Next steps

• Monitor and take over live calls
• Test your assistant
• Review calls and results