Hi All,

I had a very strange Merlin Magix issue come up today. Instead of letting it go with the resolution, I keep thinking about it. I had a customer with a Merlin Magix R4 with a voicegate voicemail. (I have been trying to convince them that it's time to upgrade for a very long time). They programmed an adjunct extension with group cover to go to voicemail. Programmed in the cover delay set at defaults (Primary 2, Secondary 2, group 3) . They programmed 6 phones with a primary cover button for the adjunct number. Calls come into the auto attendant via PRI and get transferred accordingly.

The customer said that when a call comes into the AA and is transferred to the adjunct number, if the call goes unanswered it would go to the voicemail for the adjunct. If someone would answer the covered call and a second call would come in, the call would play the auto attendant instead of the VMB for the adjunct. I said maybe the transfer return time is too low, and a couple simple things that I thought could be causing this. Eventually I said I have to come onsite to check it out. Via monitor I traced the VMS Mode codes and I also had a digi grabber on the VM ports.
Sure enough, the mode codes to the adjunct from an outside line unanswered on the first call would be #02##XXX and it would play the VMB greeting for the adjunct. If I answered the call on a primary cover button and made a second call in, the mode code would be #01##8XX indicating the call was coming in from a trunk and play the AA.

I tried a lot of different scenarios including using a T/R port instead of an adjunct. Using a 44XX phone instead of the T/R port and the Adjunct. Looping a T/R port to a trunk port and setting the trunk port as the principal user (That worked but would only allow one call to go to voicemail). The final resolution was to lower the cover delay for group to 2. Primary is set to 2 and the group is set to 2. Even if we increased the Primary and lowered the group cover delay, the same results would happen. We even increased it to 3 and 3 with the same negative results. The transfer return time is set to 9. Does anyone have any idea what would cause that? This isnt normal behavior as far as I am concerned. Again, the system is functioning with 4 rings to VM. This is so I can finally put this issue to rest.

Thank you All,

AJ