No Unity voicemail notification on shared line forwarded to voicemail

[ccazz]

I have a shared extension (DN) that appears only on two desk phones. The line is set to forward right to voicemail. I do not receive any notification on the desk phone of missed calls or voicemails. Right under the extension on the phone display you see "forwarded to voicemail" As soon as I remove the forward all, you see the voicemail notifications pop up.  Is there a way to have both the forwarding set and receive some kind of voicemail notification without having to keep checking the line for voicemail?

Thank you.

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

Missed call and message waiting are two different notifications. You should be seeing the latter regardless of call forwarding state. There are two options for missed call notifications:

1. Use Call Forward No Answer instead of Call Forward All so the phones ring. This will show the call on the phones.
2. Configure the missed call notification destination on the mailbox in Unity Connection. This will show on the email destination you configure.

[ccazz]

Hi, 1: they do not want the phones to ring. As messages are left, they will retrieve them throughout the day

2.  there is not an email destination set up for them for this situation

Thank you.

[Jonathan Schulenberg · Accepted solution]

You can silence that DN line appearance in CUCM and shorten the CFNA timer to a few seconds. The phone will show the call briefly before forwarding. Those are the only choices I'm aware of. Personally, I'd configure a simple email distribution list for that group and direct CUC missed call notifications to it.

[ccazz]

Thanks, Jonathan.  I was thinking of the timer solution but if they will be getting a lot of calls, the quick ring may be an issue with them. I think I may look into the email distribution list, as they currently do receive vm notification via email on their prime line.

[ccazz]

Before I went out for a few days, in the meantime, I shortened the timer and changed it to flash as the best option and they seemed happy with that. Thank you. 

[Maren Mahoney]

What is the "Message Waiting Lamp Policy" as set in the Service Parameters? Is it set to show MWI on all lines? Has that been overridden on the line appearance?

Suggestions:

Rather than the users calling into CUC to determine if there are messages, you could enable an Audible Message Waiting indicator (stutter tone) on those line appearances. All the users would have to do is pick up the line and listen for the stutter tone to determine if there is a message waiting. That *should* work even if the visual indicator is not working with CFWDALL in place but I am not 100% sure.

You could also, as @Jonathan Schulenberg suggested, set the call for Call Forward No Answer to VM rather than CFWDALL to VM - setting the No Answer Ring Duration (seconds) very low (I think the minimum is 5 seconds). BUT you could set the Ring Setting on those line appearances to "Disable" so there would be no indication of the incoming call. It would ring silently for five seconds and then roll to VM.

Finally, you could configure the live/dialable number to be on a CTI Route Point with CFWDALL to VM . And then on the phones have the same number in a non-dialable partition where that partition is in the CSS of the CUC SIP Trunks so that MWI could pass to the line and light it up. Because the DN is the same, if the users then pressed that line and the Messages button it would dial into CUC and reach the VM box as if it were the actual live/dialable number.

I've done this last one with a couple of numbers for my current customer and that works well.

Let us know if you have questions about any of this.

Maren

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

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@Maren Mahoney wrote:

Finally, you could configure the live/dialable number to be on a CTI Route Point with CFWDALL to VM . And then on the phones have the same number in a non-dialable partition where that partition is in the CSS of the CUC SIP Trunks so that MWI could pass to the line and light it up. Because the DN is the same, if the users then pressed that line and the Messages button it would dial into CUC and reach the VM box as if it were the actual live/dialable number.

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Or use a different DN on the phones set as an MWI Destination & Alternate Extension on the CUC mailbox. That would avoid the Partition/CSS gymnastics.

All of these suggestions are for message waiting though, not the missed call indication.

[Maren Mahoney]

@Jonathan Schulenberg You are right about the DN for MWI Destination and Alternate Extension on the CUC mailbox of course. In my environment the users insist that it be the same number (like they'd actually know or care, but kings and queens all.....)

I thought you addressed the missed call part well enough. Any time you have CFWDALL on the phone it won't show call activity as that is local-to-the-phone information and only stored on the phone. With CFWDALL CUCM does not signal out to the phone so it does not know about the missed call and can't therefore show it.

To do everything the user wants, I think the low ring no answer duration with Ring Settings to Disable is the only solution. Or, at any rate, it is *a* solution.

Maren

[ccazz]

I am not so worried about the missed call indication; most important is the message waiting indication. I will try these suggestions out next week. Thanks, again!

[ccazz]

Thank you for the suggestions as well! I will be back in the office next week and will try out these suggestions.

[ccazz]

Thank you for your suggestions!

[Kathy N.]

@ccazz, you should also check the Message Waiting Indicator Setting.  It has an option to "Inherit User's Extension" that should be unchecked and put in the extension for that specific number.

[ccazz]

thank you!