Announcements

Last Updated : Apr 21, 2016 |

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Announcements are played to callers waiting to be answered. This includes callers being presented to hunt group members, ie. ringing, and callers queued for presentation.  

  • The system supports announcements using Voicemail Pro or Embedded Voicemail.

  • If no voicemail channel is available for an announcement, the announcement is not played.

  • In conjunction with Voicemail Pro, the system allows a number of voicemail channels to be reserved for announcements. See System Settings > System > Voicemail.

  • With Voicemail Pro, the announcement can be replaced by the action specified in a Queued (1st announcement) or Still Queued (2nd announcement) start point call flow. Refer to the Voicemail Pro Installation and Maintenance documentation for details.

  • Calls can be answered during the announcement. If it is a mandatory requirement that announcements should be heard before a call is answered, then a Voicemail Pro call flow should be used before the call is presented.

  • A call becomes connected when the first announcement is played to it. That connected state is signaled to the call provider who may start billing at that point. The call will also be recorded as answered within the SMDR output once the first announcement is played.

  • If a call is rerouted to a hunt group's Night Service Group or Out of Service Fallback Group, the announcements of the new group are applied.

  • If a call overflows, the announcements of the original group are still applied, not those of the overflow group.

  • For announcements to be used effectively, the hunt group's Voicemail Answer Time must be extended or Voicemail On must be unselected.

Recording the Group Announcement

Voicemail Pro provides a default announcement "I'm afraid all the operators are busy but please hold and you will be transferred when somebody becomes available". This default is used for announcement 1 and announcement 2 if no specific hunt group announcement has been recorded. Embedded Voicemail does not provide any default announcement. Voicemail Lite also provides the default announcements.

The maximum length for announcements is 10 minutes. New announcements can be recorded using the following methods.

Voicemail Pro

The method of recording announcements depends on the mailbox mode being used by the voicemail server.

  • IP Office Mailbox Mode:

    Access the hunt group mailbox and press 3. Then press either 3 to record the 1st announcement for the hunt group or 4 to record the 2nd announcement for the hunt group.

  • Intuity Emulation Mailbox Mode:

    There is no mechanism within the Intuity telephony user interface (TUI) to record hunt group announcements. To provide custom announcements, hunt group queued and still queued start points must be configured with Voicemail Pro with the required prompts played by a generic action.

Embedded Voicemail

Embedded Voicemail does not include any default announcement or method for recording announcements. The Record Message short code feature is provided to allow the recording of announcements.

The telephone number field of short codes using this feature requires the extension number followed by either ".1" for announcement 1 or ".2" for announcement 2. For example, for extension number 300, the short codes *91N# | Record Message | N".1" and *92N# | Record Message | N".2" could be used to allow recording of the announcements by dialing *91300# and *92300#.

Settings

These settings can be edited online. Changes to these settings do not require a reboot of the system.

Field

Description

Announcements On

Default = Off.

This setting enables or disables announcements.

Wait before 1st announcement:

Default = 10 seconds. Range = 0 to 255 seconds.

This setting sets the time delay from the calls presentation, after which the first announcement should be played to the caller. If Synchronize Calls is selected, the actual wait may differ, see below.

Flag call as answered

Default = Off.

This setting is used by the CCC and CBC applications. By default they do not regarded a call as answered until it has been answered by a person or by a Voicemail Pro action with  Flag call as answered selected.  This setting allows calls to be marked as answered once the caller has heard the first announcement.

Post announcement tone

Default = Music on hold.

Following the first announcement, you can select whether the caller should hear Music on Hold, Ringing or Silence until answered or played another announcement.

2nd Announcement

Default = On.

If selected, a second announcement can be played to the caller if they have still not been answered.

Wait before 2nd announcement

Default = 20 seconds. Range = 0 to 255 seconds.

This setting sets the wait between the 1st and the 2nd announcement. If Synchronize Calls is selected, the actual wait may differ, see below.

Repeat last announcement

Default = On.

If selected, the last announcement played to the caller is repeated until they are answered or hang-up.

Wait before repeat

Default = 20 seconds.  Range = 0 to 255 seconds.

If Repeat last announcement is selected, this setting sets is applied between each repeat of the last announcement. If Synchronize Calls is selected, this value is grayed out and set to match the Wait before 2nd announcement setting.

Synchronize calls

Default = Off

This option can be used to reduce the number of voicemail channels required to provide the announcements. Using this setting, the maximum number of voicemail channels needed is 1 or 2 depending on the number of selected announcements.

  • When on:

    • If the required prompt is already being played to another caller, further callers wait until the prompt has completed and can be restarted.

    • If the required prompt is not being played and there are multiple waiting callers, once one caller has waited for the set wait period, the prompt is played to all the currently waiting callers.

    • If Voicemail Pro custom Queued or Still Queued start point call flows are used for the announcements, when Synchronize Calls is enabled the call flows support the playing of prompts only.

  • When off:

    • Announcements are played individually for each call. This requires a separate voicemail channel each time an announcement is played to each caller. While this accurately follows the wait settings, it does not use voicemail channels efficiently.
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