Minuet ACD New User 1

[cbdudley]

I am installing a small MICS 5.0 system with a NAM and Voice Mail 4.0. The system came bundled with Minuet ACD V1.2, which I have not yet installed. After reading the documentation, I have a few questions:

1) If there are agents available when a call comes in, does there still have to be an announcement or can the call be routed immediately to an agent? If this is the case, what exactly does the caller hear prior to an agent picking up the call? Management does not want an announcement to be heard unless all agents are busy.

2) The system has 4 voice mail channels. Should I dedicate one or more of these to Minuet, or will sharing be OK?

3) When an agent is not logged into a group, do all their normal programmed functions such as call-forward-no-answer and call-forward-on-busy work as usual?

4) Can the night routing feature be used to transfer after-hours calls to an outside number (such as a cell phone)?

5) Does the installation of Minuet affect any other aspects of the voice mail system?

Thanks for the help!

 

[pjolly]

Item 1 - The first point can be distribute, which immediately sends calls to the available agent(s). You do not need to use an announcement at all if you don't want to.

Item 3 - Yes, all features work normally

Item 4 - Yes

I'll leave 2 and 5 to others...not absolutely sure!

 

[executone]

Question 2: Since you only have 4 ports I would share(for alot of users I dedicate ports for that use), but how many users on the voicemail? What is your call volume going to be for ACD? You do not want callers or users trying to get into voicemail/ACD and can not because you do not have enough ports.

Question 5: No, the two co-reside on the unit. Nortel sold alot of NAM units with the ACD software, but if you are not going to use it do not install. That is what we were told out in the field.

Good Luck and I hope you can get some more opinoins!

 

[cbdudley]

There are currently 25 mailboxes on the NAM, of which 7 are guest mailboxes. Eventually, another 10 to 15 may be added.

Other than when announcements are being played, are any of the voice channels actually being used by Minuet ACD?

Thanks for the input.

 

[pjolly]

Voice mail ports are only used when announcements are being played.

 

[mroberts]

The only time the channel of the NAM is in use by the Minuet is when an announcement is being played. If the call is just in que it doesn't take up a channel so sharing what you have will probably be fine for now. If you begin to have complaints of not being able to get into vmail then you can add channels as needed. MRoberts
mroberts@americaii.com
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[cbdudley]

Thanks to all who responded.

Pjolly, can you give me some guidance regarding setting up the night routing to forward to an outside number? Thanks.

 

[pjolly]

If you set the night routing step 1 to no answer, the call will ring on the specified backup station set (part of the initial configuration process. (Pages 49 and 85 in the Norstar Minuet ACD admin guide refers)(at least, those are the pages in the guide I have You can forward that DN to your remote site. For that to work, you must have 4.1 or above MICS software, and the DN must have line redirect allowed.
As an alternative, you can use vm transfer instead of no answer, and send callers to a voice mailbox that is set up with outbound transfer enabled. This might actually work better for you depending on how you want calls handled. The caller is sent to the mailbox at night, and hears a greeting: "If you need after hours assistance, press 7 now to be transferred. Otherwise, wait for the tone and leave a message and your call will be returned as soon as possible."