Outisde Callers leaving Direct VM

[mparekh]

Currently our customer has a voicemail system (I belive its called ExpressMail) which allows any callers (vm users and non-vm users) to leave a voicemail for any voice mailbox without having to ring their phone.

Its important because this allows company employees to send each other voicemails without logging into their voicemail, also because non-employees can leave the employees voicemails without ringing their phones.

Is there any way of doing this with Unity?

[kechambe]

Unity can do this. On the subscriber transfer page you must set--

Transfer incoming calls to subscriber's phone?

to

No (send directly to subscriber's greeting)

After the greeting you will have Unity take the message.

Thanks,

Keith

[eschulz]

And even if a subscriber is configured to attempt a transfer, callers can bypass this by dialing #2 after the extension. For example, at the opening greeting dialing 1234#2 would skip any transfer attempt for x1234 and take you right to the subscriber's greeting.

-Eric

[mparekh]

May I wasn't clear with my original question. Let me try again.

Is there a way for anyone to leave a voicemail from the PSTN without having to ring the users phone, keeping in mind that user phone should still ring if someone calls him and wants to speak to him.

Thanks.

Milan

[Ginger Dillon]

Hi -

Yes, the outside callers can call the Unity "remote access number" which is defined in the PBX. If you are using CallManager, you create a CTI route point which forwards all calls to the Unity "remote access" extension. When callers reach this number, they hear Unity's Opening Greeting. Then follow the instructions Keith and Eric included in their posts. If the caller wants to reach the user's phone, then just dial the user's extension directly, instead of going through Unity.

Sincerely,

Ginger

[mparekh]

The problem with this solution is that when using Unity for call transfering (which we do), all calls will goto voicemails and not ring the phones.

I've created a route point in CM so that when users dial *extension internally it will go directly into voicemail. I was thinking if there is a way to do something similar but from external.

[tmaurello_2 · Accepted solution]

You can do this.

Create a simple CallHandler that allows extension dialing (default).

Record the greeting for this handler that states "Dial the extension of the person, followed by # 2."

Point the route point to Unity and have Unity call this handler for Express Messaging Calls. That is it.

When dialing an extension in any Unity handler, you can follow it with pound+2 (# 2) and it will not ring the phone. It will go directly to the users greeting. I use it all the time.

[mparekh]

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.