Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
I just need to keep studying a little, it's hard for me to work out an issue without understanding it and what each piece is responsible for. Visual learning would be good at this point cause everything else turns to acronym soup and hypotheticals.
Yeah the acronym soup can be a killer.
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@dashrender said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
My original goal is basically to allow for multiple switchable voicemail greetings.
This is a weird goal - are you sure it's voicemail greetings you want to change? I though from the postings it looked like the incoming announcement is what you wanted to change.
Voicemail notices are specifically for whatever mailbox a user ends up in.. is that where you really want a simple change?Can you give us an example of your full end goal?
Just think "25 year old system" and it makes sense.
We have a few phone numbers that the Avaya system just rolls over if line 1 is busy it rings on line 2 etc. If no one answers, just like a cell phone, you get a voicemail message, beeeeep, then someone leaves a message. Yes, we are using this simple voicemail greeting beep thing for people to leave messages for the business. There is no auto-attendant, there is no "press 1 for jane, press 3 for tech services" stuff.
So our system has ONE greeting, "hello, you've reached Troglodyte Systems Inc, we're avoiding calls right now, please leave a message and we'll paste a sticky note of it somewhere in the office that nobody will respond to, maybe. beeeep".
But the boss wants to switch to other greetings like one for the evening "hello, we went out to lunch but decided not to work any more, so we consider this after hours now. leave a message!"
Or a holiday greeting "you are calling within 3 weeks of a government sanctioned holiday, therefore we are very busy and don't want to talk to you, leave a message and our receptionist will delete it in the morning, thanks!"
All we want to do is pick a custom greeting. But now we have to literally record a new one every time we want to change it.
If I go through all the trouble of converting the whole office to VOIP, at least internally, we must have this feature at the least.
Other features we use, I would consider just as normal to have on a VOIP phone. Intercom ability, call hold, 3 way call, individual voicemail, shortcut buttons, speakerphone, caller ID, call history, etc.
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OK - Now we're getting somewhere. More to come.
You can probably fix this in your current system with an auto attendant setup and some time variables.
I.e. call rings - no answer - look at time if
time x = normal voicemail
time y = after hours voicemailHolidays are a bit different, some systems allows you to set a start stop for how to handle calls with times and dates, others require you to set it manually.
It's likely your current phone system can already do this.
A quick and dirty search for your phone system turned up this thread. It appears that programming that switch requires using a serial port and the software to connect to the PBX to make the updates. If you don't have these things, you'll need to hire an Avaya PBX support company to come do them for you.Your other option is to dump that system and move to FreePBX.
It can do what you want, though the holiday thing is still something I'm not sure if it would require manual intervention or not - that's a @JaredBusch question. -
@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Other features we use, I would consider just as normal to have on a VOIP phone. Intercom ability, call hold, 3 way call, individual voicemail, shortcut buttons, speakerphone, caller ID, call history, etc.
Intercom ability, - yep
call hold, - yep
3 way call, (conference calling) - yep
individual voicemail, - yep
shortcut buttons, - what is this?
speakerphone, - depends on phone, but yeah - yep
caller ID, - yep
call history, - @JaredBusch should know this one. -
@dashrender said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
shortcut buttons, - what is this?
I'm guessing quick dial or shortcuts to things like voicemail or a directory?
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@dashrender said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
call history
Yes, this is built into pretty much every phone I've played with on the VoIP side. You can also access it from the PBX if you have the user sections active.
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@coliver said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@dashrender said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
shortcut buttons, - what is this?
I'm guessing quick dial or shortcuts to things like voicemail or a directory?
Doh - in my rush to reply I read it as shortcut balloons.
Yeah, I'm sure you're right.
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@dashrender said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
OK - Now we're getting somewhere. More to come.
You can probably fix this in your current system with an auto attendant setup and some time variables.
I.e. call rings - no answer - look at time if
time x = normal voicemail
time y = after hours voicemailHolidays are a bit different, some systems allows you to set a start stop for how to handle calls with times and dates, others require you to set it manually.
It's likely your current phone system can already do this.
A quick and dirty search for your phone system turned up this thread. It appears that programming that switch requires using a serial port and the software to connect to the PBX to make the updates. If you don't have these things, you'll need to hire an Avaya PBX support company to come do them for you.Your other option is to dump that system and move to FreePBX.
It can do what you want, though the holiday thing is still something I'm not sure if it would require manual intervention or not - that's a @JaredBusch question.@guyinpv For this you want multiple recordings and then depending on who will make the change you can set it up a number of ways.
In this example, my client had two recordings for their IVR. A day version and a night version.
Then a holiday came along and they wanted it to have it say we are closed for the holiday and will reopen on Tuesday in the middle of the night IVR, so that became a third recording.
Now when they want to change it they simply let me know and I update the actual IVR to use the appropriate recording.
You could also setup various announcements or call flow controls or IVR's. basically anyway you want to make this change.
You could even have multiple day night controls target the next one and have many buttons on the recption phone to set the control you want..
It just comes down to call flow. -
Are we using IVR and voicemail greetings the same way?
Isn't IVR the interactive thing with menus and "press 1 for this" etc?
Nothing interactive about standard voicemail.
Does FreePBX have separate voicemail vs. IVR or is it all one in the same?
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Are we using IVR and voicemail greetings the same way?
Isn't IVR the interactive thing with menus and "press 1 for this" etc?
it doesn't have to have a prompt - it can simply do an action.
Nothing interactive about standard voicemail.
and by the same nature, voicemail can have prompts - press one to send with standard urgency, 9 for high urgency, 0 for operator, etc.
Does FreePBX have separate voicemail vs. IVR or is it all one in the same?
They are each either own function - but a nature of Voicemail is user-centric - meaning, it's expected that the user will manage it 99.9% of the time. I.e. you want to change voice greatings, you the user do that. Some systems do allow for two different recordings - in office, out of office. Personally, I've never seen one offer more than two, but there's nothing really stopping someone from making such a system.
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Are we using IVR and voicemail greetings the same way?
Isn't IVR the interactive thing with menus and "press 1 for this" etc?
Nothing interactive about standard voicemail.
Does FreePBX have separate voicemail vs. IVR or is it all one in the same?
Separate
