topic Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail in Unified Communications Infrastructure

Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

Shannon Sutter — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 07:20:41 GMT

Hi,

We are running CUCM 6.1.3 and Unity 4.0.4.

I have currently setup on our mail line the standard greeting (Workhours 8am-6pm) and the closed greeting (AfterHours 6pm-8am).

What I am trying to do now, is to send straight to voicemail all After Hours incoming calls.

I have read it could be done from Unity.

If you let me know how to (Step by step) if will be great!!

Thanks for you help.

Zeek

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

Jonathan Schulenberg — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:34:38 GMT

Based on your description it sounds as if you have the calls already routed to a Unity Call Handler that has a Closed Greeting enabled? IF that is correct then adjusting it is on that same Closed Greeting page. You can specify what mailbox to save the message to; or, set the greeting to Blank and the after greeting action to the appropriate subscriber mailbox that should take the message.

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

Shannon Sutter — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:28:54 GMT

What I am trying to do, is to send after hours straight to voicemail wihtout any ringing prior to the

greeting.

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

Ovais Iqbal — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:24:07 GMT

Hi,

Are you using attempt transfer to option or send to greeting option when selecting a subscriber on your closed hour greeting page? 2nd option would send the call right in to the mailbox without any rings.

There are few other options to achieve what you are trying to do but first try the above.

Thanks

Ovais.

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

julio — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:46:13 GMT

you are able to do this, in Unity, under the call Handler you have, select Greetings, there is option there to make it go directly to the Greeting or the user.

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

Shannon Sutter — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:02:16 GMT

The unity Subscriber account is configured like this:

Greeting: CLOSED

ENABLED

Source: Recording

After greeting: TAKE MESSAGE

If someone calls after hours it rings until you get the greeting, then you can leave a VM.

If I want the callers to go straight to the greeting with no ring waiting time, do I have to configure CUCM instead of Unity?

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

CHRIS CHARLEBOIS — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:29:22 GMT

You have two options. You can route all calls to that number through Unity, so that Unity can send the call to the phone during open hours and take a message during closed hours. However, in our case, this created a short delay in which the caller heard Music on Hold, which was not a perferred solution.

Here is what I did: We already had a 'direct-to-vm' partition. This was a seperate partition that contained a single CTI RP of XXXX. This was configured to forward all calls to VM. We also have a *XXXX translation pattern that strips the * and using the CSS that specifies this 'direct-to-vm' partition. This allows users to transfer a call directly into someone's VM without ringing their phone. In order to have this happen automatically afterhours, I created an 'afterhours' partition that uses a time schedule so that it is only active afterhours. In this partition, I created translation patterns for each number that I wanted automatically forward, and I specified the 'direct-to-vm' calling search space. Then I inserted this 'afterhours' partition into the CSS that the VG uses (because we only cared about forwarding calls inbound from the PSTN) in front of everything else. So, while that partition is active (i.e. afterhours), the calls get sent to Unity *before* they hit the IP Phone.

This system is working great for us. The only drawback is that we need to create a seperate partition for each time schedule. For example, we have one partition for 8am-5pm, another for 7:30-4:30, etc etc.

Hope this helps,

Chris

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

Ovais Iqbal — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:44:54 GMT

see the attached screen shot, you do not need to create time base partition / CTI port etc for your scenario,

just Unity Call Handler changes should do the job.

On the screen shot it is showing standard greeting, just change it to closed in your case.

Thanks

Ovais.

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

CHRIS CHARLEBOIS — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:49:34 GMT

That's great, if Unity has the call. But CUCM needs to route the call to Unity before Unity can make that ToD decision. When a call comes into CUCM, unless CUCM is configured to route all calls to Unity and allow Unity to make the routing decision, CUCM will attempt to ring the phone and only forward to VM after the Ring No Answer timer has expired.

Chris

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

Shannon Sutter — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:57:54 GMT

Correct, this is why i believe the configuration has to start under CUCM

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

Ovais Iqbal — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:05:45 GMT

I think we are confused here, did you not say intially that your main line # is already functioning?

which means that CUCM is already sending calls to UNITY Auto Attendant? if yes then simply change what I suggested for your closed greeting.

Thanks

Ovais.

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

CHRIS CHARLEBOIS — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:09:53 GMT

The way I'm reading it, it is not an Auto Attendant. It is just the main line / Front Desk phone. It only gets routed to Unity (normally) on a Ring No Answer or Ring Busy. Correct?

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

Shannon Sutter — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:13:04 GMT

yes, correct, we don't have Auto Attendant configured.

It's the no ring no answer on CUCM ------> goes to Unity.

Sorry, I didn't really post much information of the scenario.

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

CHRIS CHARLEBOIS — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:15:54 GMT

So the only way to get it to do what you want that I know of is the solution I outline above. Let me know how it turns out or if you find a different solution.

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

Ovais Iqbal — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:17:40 GMT

Ok, no problem. You can explain it again if you have not reached a resolution yet with the Direct-to-VM solution (CTI port / Time based PT), we can still try to help.

Thanks

Ovais.

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

Shannon Sutter — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:34:12 GMT

So, here is what I've done so far, please correct me if I am missing something.

I've created a CTI DirectToVM.

A DirecToVoiceMail partition setup with a Time Schedule for afterhours.

A Translation Pattern *XXXX with the above Partition

Then created a CSS and added DirectToVoiceMail partition at the top.

I setup our main ext with the CSS.

Is this all?

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

Ovais Iqbal — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:38:29 GMT

If you have never configured this before then follow the instructions at the link below

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-3925

Thanks

Ovais

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

CHRIS CHARLEBOIS — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:12:44 GMT

I'm sorry. I may have confused you with the *XXXX part.

Here's the step-by-step: (BTW, I forgot a step eariler, which I have included here.)

Create one or more Time Periods that cooresponds to the times that you want the calls forwarded to VM.

Create a Time Schedule that includes all of the Time Periods you just created.

Create a new partition, Afterhours-PT (or whatever you like). Assign it the Time Schedule you just created.

(These three are all done from the Call Routing | Class of Control menu)

Check your existing Voice Mail Profile. If the Voice Mail Box Mask is blank, create a copy with a new name and set the mask to be XXXX.

(This is done from the Voice Mail | Voice Mail Profile menu. It also might not be necessary, but we have it in our environment.)

Create one Route Point for each DN that you want forwarded to VM. For each...

Assign Line 1 to the same number as the DN you want forwarded, but in the Afterhours-PT.

Assign the Voice Mail Profile to be the one you created (or your general one, if you already have a Voice Mail Box Mask.)

Check the Voice Mail box next to Call Forward All

Edit your Calling Search Space. If you have multiple, either edit them all, or just the one(s) that apply to your incoming calls (i.e. assigned to your voice gateway(s)). Insert the Afterhours-PT and move it up the list so that it is first.

And that is all. This is a little simplier than what I described earlier because it is only used by the Afterhours partition. Our environment also allows users to forward calls directly to VM, which is where the *XXXX comes in.

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

Shannon Sutter — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:28:14 GMT

Thanks a lot for all details.

I will configured it today and get back to you guys tomorrow after testing the system.

Zeek

Re: Send After Hours Incoming calls straight to Voicemail

CHRIS CHARLEBOIS — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:34:17 GMT

BTW, thanks to the excellent document that Ovais posted (5 stars for you, BTW), I remembered why we put in that Voice Mail Box Mask, and it is not necessary for this task. The method that is described in that document is useful for user-initiated transfers to VM, but not needed when using time-sensitive Intercept partitions like we are.