Embedded Voice Mail & Auto Attendant Inquiries

[arewethereyet]

IP Office Forum,

I have an Avaya IP Office 500 v2 system installed in an office (purchased from previous tenant) with Avaya 5410 phones. It has 8 analog voice lines coming into it and uses embedded voice mail. The incoming call route is setup to hit one hunt group that contains all of the extensions in the office, and the fallback route is set to "Dial In". When calls come in and go unanswered, the default voice mail message is played. My two questions are:

1) How can I access, modify or change the default voice mail message that states, "No one is available to take your call, please leave a message"? I don't know what codes are used to access voice mail besides the "messages" button on the phones and *17. My preference would be to replace this default with one or a group of our employees.

2) Can the Auto Attendant be setup as the fallback after calls hit the phones and go unanswered? As an experiment, I setup the incoming call route to Auto Attendant, set the Auto Attendant to Dial by Number, recorded a message (*8401), and set the fallback to our main (only) hunt group. While it worked (but still sent unanswered calls to the default voice mail) the boss would prefer the reverse route. I didn't see Auto Attendant in the fallback drop down list.

I am not a certified Avaya technician (obvious?). I am simply an office manager trying to get voice mail functioning when no one is in the office, and having Auto Attendant as fallback is merely on the nice-to-have list. The certified Avaya technician who did the installation has promised to set a date for the technician to follow up on this, but is apparently very busy with a large job that keeps pushing our appointment later and later. I am on day 10 of waiting, and would appreciate a point to documentation that might help, or anything else that might help in this situation.

Thank you for your time,
arewethereyet

 

[tlpeter]

1) Dial *17 (each user) and press 3.
Now the user can record a name.
2) Create a shortcode (*99 for example) and set it like this:
*99
Auto Attendant
AA:name auto attendant

Then for every user set a forward no answer to *99

But you need to choose between the AA or users voicemail.


BAZINGA!

I'm not insane, my mother had me tested!

 

[IPGuru]

assuming inbound calls ring to a group:

add a user (it does not need a physical port & is generally called a phantom user)
set forward unconditional the the short-code suggested by tlpeter
set forward hunt-group calls
create a new SEQUENTIAL group
add the phantom user
edit the existing group & add the new group as an overflow group

To change the call queue messages you need to use the shortcodes
*91N & *92N where N is the mailbox number you which to change.

I would also recommend finding a decent Maintainer, 10 days & waiting for an engineer to attend for what is 10 minuets of programing that could be completed remotely is a joke.

also setting a fallback destination of Dialin in the incoming call route is at best pointless

the one final piece of advice is yous the help function (F1) it does a pretty good job of explaining function of each field (I am sure that everyone in the MVP list on the right uses it on a daily basis, I know I do.)

I do not Have A.D.D. im just easily, Hey look a Squirrel!

 

[arewethereyet]

First, thank you both for your quick responses. I was not able to attempt implementing your ideas until this evening...

tlpeter:

I setup the voice greeting on each phone using *17, option 3, recorded, saved and played greeting to verify it was stored.

I created the *99 Shortcode, using the convention, "AA:Name" in the name field.

For each user that exists in my 200 Main hunt group, I went into the "User" section, selected each user, selected the "Forwarding" tab, checked the "Forward On No Answer" box, entered "*99" in the "Forward Number" field.

I'm not sure what you meant about choosing between the AA(Auto Attendant) or users voicemail. I recorded messages for all four Auto Attendant codes (*8101,*8202,*8203,*8401) since I wasn't sure which one it might hit.

Result: No change; incoming call goes to built-in greeting, "No one is available to take your call, please leave a message."

IPGuru:

I added a phantom user. In the Voicemail tab, I unchecked the "Voicemail On" box. In the Forwarding tab, I made sure the "Forward Unconditional" box was checked, set the "Forward Number" field to "*99", and made sure the "Forward Internal Calls" box was checked.

I created a new hunt group, using sequential ring mode. I added the phantom user the the user list. I went into the settings for the existing hunt group, in the "Overflow Group List", I added my new hunt group.

If I understand correctly, by *91N & *92N I can change the call queue greeting on each phone from a single phone remotely? I didn't get a chance to try this, yet.

The help/F1 function was helpful making sure I used the correct name convention for the Auto Attendant, as one example; the name was not preceded by AA: ... not sure if that would have made a difference or not.

I didn't think I could use a blank listing in the fallback destination field; I highlighted and deleted it.

Result:

No change; incoming call goes to built-in greeting, "No one is available to take your call, please leave a message."

It's certainly possible I interpreted some of the advice I was given incorrectly. I thank you both for your help.

--arewethereyet

 

[IPGuru]

1) Experiment a bit, (just keep a backup of the current cfg file in-case things go too wrong (breaking things is the way to learn the most)

2) The default greeting should tel you which mailbox the call is being routed to, this should help you pin down the error.

3) seem my comments about finding a competent maintainer! Any competent maintainer should be able to resolve this requirement without needing to attend site, unfortunately there are a loot of cowboys selling & installing this equipment who do not have a clue.



I do not Have A.D.D. im just easily, Hey look a Squirrel!