Time Conditions

Time Conditions

A time condition is a reusable time-of-day / day-of-week schedule. Define “Business Hours” once — Mon–Fri 09:00–17:00 in your local timezone — then point any inbound route (or other schedule-aware feature) at it. When the schedule changes, you edit one condition and every route that references it follows.

Nova PBX → Call Routing → Time Conditions lists every condition with its timezone, range count, match action, and status. Search filters by name or timezone.

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Related pages: Inbound Routes · IVR Menus

Creating a Time Condition

1. Click Add time condition (top-right).
2. Give it a Name (e.g. “Business Hours”) and an optional Label shown under the name in lists.
3. Pick the Timezone — this is the calendar reference for every range. “09:00 Monday” in America/Toronto is a different moment than in America/Los_Angeles.
4. Add one or more time ranges (below).
5. Click Create, then push the change live with Apply Changes in the banner.

Time Ranges

Each range is a start time, an end time, and a set of weekdays:

• Start → End — wall-clock times in the condition’s timezone (e.g. 09:00 → 17:00).
• Days — toggle the weekday pills (S M T W T F S). A range only matches on its selected days.
• Add as many ranges as you need — the condition matches when the current time falls inside any range.

A few shapes this supports:

Goal	Ranges
Standard business hours	09:00–17:00, Mon–Fri
Two shifts to different queues	Condition A: 06:00–14:00 Mon–Fri · Condition B: 14:00–22:00 Mon–Fri
”Office closed” (evenings + weekends)	00:00–23:59 Sat+Sun plus 17:00–23:59 Mon–Fri
Saturday half-day	Add 09:00–12:00 Sat as a second range on Business Hours

Note

Ranges are weekly recurring — there is no date picker, so a specific calendar date (a statutory holiday, an office closure) can’t be expressed yet. For a one-off holiday, temporarily disable the condition (or enable a closed-routing rule on the route) for the day and revert after.

Match and No-Match Actions

Each condition carries a Match action (fires when the current time is inside a range) and a No-match action (outside all ranges): Allow, Reject, Voicemail, or External.

When a time condition is used by an inbound route in Schedule mode, the route’s own rule destinations decide where the call goes — the condition’s actions are not consulted. The actions exist for consumers that read the condition directly; pick sensible defaults and don’t overthink them for inbound-route use.

How Inbound Routes Consume Time Conditions

This is the main event. On an inbound route in Schedule mode:

1. Each schedule rule pairs a time condition with a destination (queue, ring group, IVR, voicemail…).
2. Rules are evaluated in priority order — the first rule whose condition matches the current time wins.
3. A rule with no condition always matches — useful as a catch-all.
4. The route’s default destination catches calls that match no rule (this is your “after hours” path — you usually don’t need a separate After Hours condition; define Business Hours and let the default catch everything else).

So the standard setup is: one “Business Hours” condition → rule 1 sends matching calls to your day queue → default destination sends everything else to voicemail or an after-hours IVR.

Status

Active conditions are evaluated normally. A Disabled condition always reports “no match” — every route rule that references it skips, which makes disabling a quick way to force after-hours routing during an unplanned closure.

Deleting

Use ⋯ → Delete on the list row. The condition and its ranges are removed permanently; any inbound route rule that referenced it falls back to the route’s no-match/default destination. Review your routes after deleting.

Troubleshooting

• Not matching when it should — check the timezone first. A condition set to UTC with a Toronto office is off by 4–5 hours.
• Off by an hour since the clocks changed — use region-aware zones (America/Toronto), which track DST automatically.
• Changes not taking effect on calls — staged config must be pushed: click Apply Changes in the banner at the top of Switchboard.