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.

  Note:

  Call Billing and Logging

  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, for example forwarded, the announcement plan of the original user is still applied until the call is answered. The exception is calls rerouted to a hunt group at which point the hunt group announcement settings are applied.

• For announcements to be used effectively, either the user's no answer time must be extended beyond the default 15 seconds or Voicemail On should be deselected.

Recording Announcements

Voicemail Pro

There is no mechanism within the telephony user interfaces (TUI) to record user announcements. To provide custom announcements, user 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 an announcement. 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#.

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