BCM50 r6 Voicemail DN for Central VM not working

[QueBall780]

We have some BCM50 systems in branch offices and the Voicemail for all locations is on the BCM400 at the main office. (Centralized Voicemail configuration)

We recently upgraded the BCM50 units from Release 3 to Release 6 but there are some problems with voicemail that I just cannot figure out that is only affecting the extensions in these branch offices.

The sets are configured to forward to the VM extension of 8500 after 4 rings. But calls to their sets will just continuously ring and never go to voicemail if nobody picks up. If they are already on the phone I set it to forward to 8500 if busy but again it just rings continuously.
As a temporary workaround they set their phone to DND when they leave the desk but otherwise they cannot let their phones just ring.

I asked them to dial Feature 985 and instead of reporting their VM extension as the 8500 as it is setup in Message Center 1, their phones will show the local call pilot extension. eg. 7334 for the 7xxx branch.


When they dial Feature 981 to check messages it tries to log into the local call pilot where no mailboxes exist. (No VM box licenses are even installed on these remote systems)
If they manually dial extension 8500 they can get into their voicemail.


For the setup. Each set has a unique assigned target line with their extension as the private received #, Caller id set on, and vmsg set on set to ring only.
Looking at the target line it has Voice message center: 1 set.
going to Applications->Voice Messaging
Voice message center 1 is set to external number 8500

As mentioned, the routing is fine. Users can just dial 8500 to get into their own voicemail but the VM center settings do not seem to be working as expected.

System is Release 6 system SU 9 BCM050.R600.SU.System-009.201202

 

[hawks]

The remote site can not use the F98x back to the Central location. If they use F98x it will try top access the CP on the BCM50 just like it is doing so that is acting normal. What happens if they dial 8500 from their phone?

 

[curlycord]

I asked them to dial Feature 985 and instead of reporting their VM extension as the 8500 as it is setup in Message Center 1, their phones will show the local call pilot extension. eg. 7334 for the 7xxx branch."

That's normal, F985 reports the local CP DN and not what is setup under message center.

I am not up on centralized anymore but always thought for centralized mail the remote sites cannot use F981.

When they manually dial 8500 is that a DN on the remote site or a Dest code?









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curlycord

http://www.curlycord.com

 

[curlycord]

How are the system linked?


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curlycord

http://www.curlycord.com

 

[QueBall780]

I never looked at the result of F985 on a remote system before so I'm not sure if it should be showing the remote extension or not.

But I've been staring at the settings on the BCM50 units so much I think I might have missed something I didn't consider.

I went back and looked at the central BCM400 unit and for some reason I decided to look at the Sets->Active Application DNs screen for the Voicemail DN. I notice that the Private OLI field for the voicemail extension is blank. I filled in 8500 in there. Perhaps it's required for the remote BCM units to find that extension. Unfortunately I won't be able to test this until I have someone on site to verify it's working as expected but something tells me that's required for some reason. I'm confused why it's required but I think it's supposed to be explicitly filled in.

Should voicemail also have an active target line too? And if so, any special setup of the target line?

 

[QueBall780]

Oh and 8500 is the Application DN on the remote site. No special destination code setup specifically for 8500 that isn't covered by the generic site destination code of "8" for everything at the central site.

 

[QueBall780]

Did a little more guessing and testing on this one.

Adding 8500 to the private OLI does nothing.
Messing around with target lines didn't change anything.

But I have more symptoms.

So, if the call originates from an internal extension then it will transfer to voicemail properly, nothing appears to be wrong.

Any external call and it does not seem to matter what trunk it comes in on will not work.

So here is an example call:
Call comes in on analog trunk in remote branch. That line is redirected to central site receptionist extension.
Reception answers the call, transfers caller to extension in branch. It rings 4 times, you hear a little blip and then you just get dead air.

On the BCM Monitor for the central site it shows the call on the inbound VOIP trunk from the branch as Alerting status and never picks up and no phones are ringing anywhere DNIS says 8503. If I call someone internally, just before the voicemail picks up I see it say Ext>8055 then the voicemail greeting starts playing. I know voicemail grabs a bunch of application DN's, there is no application on 8503 though, that's an invalid extension number it doesn't exist anywhere in the dialling plan. If you look at the list of applications and sort by port number it's 8500 then 8055,8039,8025... So if the voicemail is not being used it makes sense that the first port would be 8055. If I dial into voicemail with a second phone it shows the next port number just before the greeting plays. So that seems logical. But why wouldn't the remote site be going to those numbers or does that even matter?

If I change the call forwarding on the remote set to just call my own extension instead of voicemail when busy or after 4 rings then my phone at the central site does ring, I can pick it up and it all looks fine. It's just calls forwarded to voicemail that do not work as expected.

I even tried to renumber the voicemail extension number to something in the middle of our DN range and it made no difference at all.

 

[hawks]

Ok let’s take the outside trunks out of the equation for a minute. What happens when:
1) You said internal calls from within the BCM 50 go to voice mail correct?
2) Have the operator on the BCM 400 call someone at the 50 location and they not answer and see what happens?
3) Have someone from the 50 call the Operator at the 400 and have her Transfer them back to another ext on the 50 and see what happens.

 

[QueBall780]

1) Internal calls work fine.
2) Internal calls work fine, even between branch offices.
3) Internal calls work fine, even between branches, even when transferred to other bcm50 sites.

Yep, it seems to need to be an "external" call of some sort before it breaks.