On-call

What on-call is

On-call is a mode a workgroup can be in. It makes one workgroup the practice's catch-all for a stretch of time — while it's on-call, that team handles everything that comes in. A workgroup has two states: normal and on-call. Most of the time it's normal. During the windows you define — nights, weekends, holidays — it switches to on-call, then switches back on its own. Nobody has to flip anything each evening.

What on-call does

The main thing on-call does is override routing:

• Every voicemail is directed to the on-call workgroup, regardless of what it's about. Normally the AI reads each voicemail and decides which workgroup and people it belongs to. While a workgroup is on-call, that decision is bypassed: the voicemail is scoped to the on-call team and tagged to them no matter what the caller said. The AI still transcribes it and applies that workgroup's own priorities and categories — it just doesn't send it anywhere else. This is the point of on-call: after hours, one team catches every call.

Two supporting things also change:

• Callers hear a different greeting. Because the call is now going to the off-hours team rather than the usual desk, callers hear the workgroup's on-call greeting instead of the normal one — your chance to say who's covering and what to expect after hours. That's why on-call has its own greeting.
• The practice shows an OnCall mode active banner. Everyone in the practice sees a green banner naming the on-call workgroup, so the team knows after-hours cover is running right now. Anyone can dismiss it for their own session; it returns next session, or when a different workgroup goes on-call.

When to use on-call

Use on-call when a dedicated team handles calls outside normal hours and you want every off-hours call to land with that team:

• After-hours nurse or triage lines — evenings and weekends when the regular desk is closed but one team is covering everything.
• On-call rotas — a surgical or clinical team that takes all emergency calls on a rotating schedule.
• Holiday cover — a closure where a single team picks up whatever comes in.

If calls should keep being sorted to different teams by subject even after hours, you don't want on-call — leave the AI to classify normally.

When a workgroup is actually on-call

Two things must both be true for on-call to be live:

1. The master on-call toggle is on for the workgroup — it lives in the workgroup's Settings.
2. An on-call schedule currently matches — the workgroup has at least one schedule whose rules include this exact moment, evaluated in the practice's timezone.

If the toggle is on but no schedule matches right now, the workgroup is armed but not on-call — nothing changes for callers until a schedule window opens. If the toggle is off, schedules are ignored entirely. Think of the toggle as the master switch and the schedule as the timer.

Turning on-call on

Three pieces, set up once:

1. Flip the on-call toggle. Open the workgroup → Settings and turn on-call on. This can be done by anyone who can update the workgroup — Hospital Admins, Hospital Staff, Practice Admins, and the workgroup's own admins (see Permissions).
2. Add at least one on-call schedule. The schedule defines when the workgroup is on-call. Without a matching schedule, the toggle does nothing.
3. Assign the on-call greeting. Set what callers hear while on-call — see On-call greetings.

On-call windows (schedules)

On-call uses schedules to decide when. Each on-call window is a rule, and a workgroup can have several:

• Weekly — recurring days and times (e.g. Mon–Fri 17:00–09:00, all day Sat/Sun).
• Date range — a span of dates (e.g. a colleague covering a two-week stretch).
• Specific date — a single day (e.g. a public holiday).

When more than one window is active at the same time, the most specific one wins: a specific date beats a date range, which beats a weekly rule. That means a one-off holiday override takes precedence over the normal weekly on-call pattern — exactly what you want when the usual rota doesn't apply that day.

What callers hear

While on-call is active, the greeting is resolved most-specific-first:

1. The active on-call schedule's own greeting, if it has one.
2. The workgroup's on-call greeting.
3. The practice's on-call greeting.
4. The system default greeting.

So you can set one on-call greeting for the whole workgroup and, if a particular schedule needs different wording (say, a holiday closure), override just that schedule. Full detail — including how to record and assign these — is on the Greetings page.

A common setup

An after-hours nurse line for a practice:

• One workgroup, After-Hours Nurse, with the on-call toggle on.
• A weekly on-call schedule covering evenings and weekends.
• A calm on-call greeting: "You've reached the after-hours nurse line. Leave your name, number, and reason for calling and the on-call nurse will call you back."
• During those windows the banner shows, the on-call greeting plays, and voicemails land in the inbox tagged and ready like any other.

Related

• Workgroups — the team on-call runs on.
• Schedules — the windows that make on-call active.
• Greetings → On-call greetings — what callers hear while on-call.