If your recording is vague, confusing, or drags on, customers will lose interest and hang up the phone instead of leaving a voicemail message. To help you create an effective after hours announcement, here are some best practices and sample scripts you can employ.
.Oh - if anyone is still curious: I recorded the greeting via the phones custom greeting function, then called to listen to it from another phone, then turned off the phone and called again. Same message. I had wondered if just maybe the phone played the message when on, and the carrier played the message when the phone was unreachable.

Configuration guides of tested IP phones, soft phones, door phones, audio alerter devices, and intercom devices.
On the iPhone, go into voicemail and tap "Greeting". Record a few seconds of something and tap stop. Before you tap save, use iFuntastic or SFTP to navigate to /var/root/Library/Voicemail on your iPhone. You'll see a file called "Greeting. amr". This is the audio you just recorded. Delete that file and replace it with your custom message which should then be renamed to "Greeting.amr". Tap "Play" on the iPhone to verify your message works. If it plays, tap "Save" and your custom message will be uploaded to AT&T's servers.