UNITY CONNECTION 7.X auto attendant call routing

[a.gooding]

Hi guys,

i have a question WRT the call routing. Id like to have calls go to the AA and if someone dials the extension it then goes to that extension. However, if someone doesnt answer, it should prompt the External Caller for an option to press 1 to leave a message or 0 for the operator. I stress on External since i know we can do this on the users caller input however we dont want an Internal User calling another user and have this option played back but just have them reach the normal voicemail.

in summary:

666-777-5566 > AA> DIAL 2000> NO ANSWER>PROMPT FOR 1 TO LEAVE VM OR 0 FOR OPERATOR

2001 >DIAL 2000> NO ANSWER> LEAVE VOICEMAIL

any pointers would be appreciated.

[lindborg]

You should be able to do this leveraging the power of the “route from next routine rule” option – however I think this was not added until 8.0(1) – I’d have to check the specific 7.x version you’re at.

Basically you’d set up a forwarding routing rule that went to a call handler that played the alternate greeting set to active and recorded to say “press 1 to leave a message or 0 for the operator” – the 1 key is mapped to the “route from next  call routing rule” action and the 0 key is setup to transfer to the operator call handler.  Be sure to have the greeting repeat once and then have the after greeting action set to also route from next call routing rule.

In the routing rule you’ll have to configure the routing rule conditions such that this rule only fires if the calling number is NOT a known extension in your system – there’s no handy way to do this automatically but hopefully your numbering plan is such that you can get away with conditions such as “calling number greater than 3500” or the like.  Or you might have it setup such that internal callers forward in using a different dialed number than outside callers would use and you can trigger it based on the dialed number – somehow or another you’ll have to identify if this as an external caller.

As a side note – I’d suggest changing the user experience here just a tad – I realize you’re trying to help callers understand they can get to the operator easily but forcing them to hit a key there is bad style in my opinion (done many, many user experience interviews with folks – I hear this complaint  a LOT – callers really hate this).  You might simply have the greeting on the above call handler set to play “You can press 0 to reach an operator at any time” and then pass the call straight through to the “route from next routing rule” action – assuming all the 0 keys for all users and handlers are set to go to the operator (default) then this would work well and would be considerably less intrusive in that it doesn’t require the user to press a key to advance where they very likely want to go anyway.  You can even get fancy and only play this during office hours and play a blank greeting after hours if the operator is not on site 24 hours a day.  Just a suggestion…

[a.gooding]

Thats very detailed, thanks much for the explanation.

i agree with the call routing change you suggested and we did mention this to the customer, however, thier legacy pbx has this exact setup and they would like to maintain it.

little confused about one thing. the only way i can see separating external to internal is through the AA. There is the option for supervised transfer which is what im zeroing in on. now if the person doesnt answer, the call goes back to the AA automatically. if i could somehow tell that supervised transfer to Give the options it may work i think. But then, the supervised transfer has to retain the extension number so it will know to forward to the VM of the user after the call is returned. (think im confusing myself)

we actually are upgrading to 8.0.3 at the moment (presently doing this) so im gonna check in a few and apply your suggestions.

ill probably be back asking something else on this