Set expiration for Alternate Greeting using Greetings Administrator?

[Steve Ballantyne]

I am running: Cisco Unity Connection version: 8.6.2.10000-76

Does anyone know of a way that I could allow users to set an expiration on an alternate greeting using the greetings adminstrator?

I sort of thought that this was possible (why wouldn't it be?) and I promised this feature to a group of users with a system call handler.  Now I cannot find a way to do it!!

Basically, I want a select group of users (call handler owners) to be able to 'dial in' to their own system call handler and set a temporary greeting to play in the event that they close early that day - or they have a 'non holiday' (in service training, etc).  I don't want to trust them to remember to *remove* the alternate greeting when the holiday is over.  And I certainly don't want to give them access to my call handler administration!

If an expiration is not possible, I am open to other suggestions.  ;-)

Thanks,

-Steve Ballantyne

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Steve,

I don't see any way to do this with the Greeting Admin access. If you're

willing to burn a license you could always leverage an actual user mailbox

to do most of the main things a Call Handler can and then they would have

the access they desire

Cheers!

Rob

"A smile relieves a heart that grieves" 

- Stones

[Steve Ballantyne]

Hello Rob,

I actually started with a voice mailbox before I knew how to leverage a call handler.  But for what I have set up (schedules, external after-hour transfers, etc) I don't think that there is any turning back.  I'm going to have to tell them that they need to turn the alternate off manually.  I guess it's not a HUGE deal, because when the schedule gets to "closed" status, the alternate would no longer play anyway.  Or at least - that is how I understand that this will work.

I just don't understand why they wouldn't give expiration controls to the greetings administrators.  Just another one of Cisco's "what the hell were you thinking" mysteries.

Perhaps we can expect this feature in the next version of Unity?  Hah!  Just kidding.  :-)

[lindborg]

well, if you don't request it of your account team I can promise you it wont show up - expecting the product owners to spend lots of dev time and test time (read: money) on a feature there's no demand for and generates no revenue is a little odd, no?  Greetings administrator has been in there for years and this is officially the first time I've heard anyone need to set the greetings expiration over the phone.  That's probalby your first clue why it wasn't put in ;->

the conversation sequence for allowing users to input date/time for the expiration times is pretty involved/confusing - it's in the user conversation originaly because it was needed for vacation time greetings (OOO stuff) which is pretty common - similiar scenarios for call handlers are less necessary given the holiday greetings option in Connection - just turning a greeting on/off over the phone was necessary for common "snow day" type scenarios - leveraged with the "route from next" capability in Connection it makes for some power inbound call routing options that can be flipped on/off via a phone interface using the greetings administrator. 

If you think we swung and missed then by all means put a feature request in with your account team - nothing gets done without known demand - we're not mind readers.

[Steve Ballantyne]

Hello lindborg,

Thanks for the feedback.  I had no plans of requesting this feature from anyone, so your comments are fair.  :-)  But telling my 'account team' that I want a new feature doesn't sound like it's going to get me anywhere.  I am not even sure who that would be?  We do have a reional sales guy that visits us on occassion.  And I get a lot of pointed surveys (which are sales tools - not feedback queries).  It seems like there should be a better way to do this.  Through an official feature request of some sort.  I did a search, and all I found was other people suggestion a feature request area.

And please excuse my cinisism.  My support experience with Cisco has been pretty miserable.  Thankfully we have a good reseller and service provider.  And - the products do hold up pretty well.  Although I have received a lot of switches lately with bad power supplies.  And don't even get me started on opening a TAC case.  :-D

I also want to go on record saying that I have requested a lot of features over the years with a lot of different products.  And I can't recall a single time that my features have been implimented (although I have had a few which were given consideration - and that counts for something).  This could be an indication that my ideas are terrible.  But when I see a few hundred feature requests piled up over a few years time for a product, that doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling that the developers actually care what users really think.  This may be why there isn't such a feature here!

[Rob Huffman · Accepted solution]

Hi Steve,

I just wanted to go back to this comment;

"I guess it's not a HUGE deal, because when the schedule gets to "closed"  status, the alternate would no longer play anyway.  Or at least - that  is how I understand that this will work."

I believe the Alternate Greeting - when active, actually "overrides" all other Greetings

and is "sticky" so things may not work as you expect them to.

Cheers!

Rob

"A smile relieves a heart that grieves" 

- Stones

[Steve Ballantyne]

Hello Rob,

Right you are!  I was testing this earlier this morning and I came to the conclusion that an alternate greeting trumps everything - even schedules (I tested this with a test call handler, and a test schedule).

This is not going to work the way I had planned at all.  But this will be a case where I just need to inform the users of the various nuances and let them figure out how they will work around it.  For an office where the staff is constantly changing, and there are often "floats" (temporary workers) popping in from time to time, these are going to have to be some very good instructions and the communication is going to have to be good among the workers!