31.2.2 Delivery Blackout

Delivery blackout schedules define a weekly schedule of periods during which deliveries are not to be attempted. The most common use of this is in connection with voice deliveries. Depending on the specific retry mechanism set for the user, once a blackout period is entered, deliveries may simply stop, or may be resumed after the period.

Different kinds of destinations can have different blackout schedules, and there may be a .default. blackout schedule for all delivery types for which an explicit schedule does not exist.

Blackout schedules may be defined in the switch. There may be a schedule defined as part of the user settings, or if not, a system-level schedule may apply.

The switch-defined schedule forms a base schedule against which any schedule in a JobSubmit request is compared. The main goal of the comparison is to make sure a particular JobSubmit request does not reduce the blackout schedule. However, the DeliveryBlackout specified in a JobSubmit request does not necessarily have to cover the entire switch-defined schedule, including all delivery types and days. So the Cloud Fax and Notifications API processing of the data provided in the DeliveryBlackout element is as follows:

1. Obtain the complete switch-defined schedule (user or system as applicable)
2. Consolidate the requested schedule.
3. For every combination of address type and weekday, make sure that that completely covers the corresponding address type/weekday schedule defined by the switch.

If a request-defined period would shorten the switch-defined period, the job submit will be rejected. The net effect is that address types and weekdays not included in the request will be subject to only the switch-defined schedule.