Voice Mail setup

[Strubbs]

Our current system is a Legend 7 and we just installed Merlin Mail r3. Our extensions are 3 digits long. The operator is extension 100. Our Night Service button on the operator’s phone that would turn the night ring on most of the extensions and we had an answering machine covering line one. We have removed all the extensions except the main operator from the night service list and added the 770 VM calling group as the calling group for night service.

How we'd like it to work:

The day attendant should pick up after 6 rings and transfer to the General mail box , but give an option to dial 0 to get back to the operator. Plus, the night attendant should pick up immediately (if the Night Service button is pressed) and play our greeting “Press one for sales, press two for parts” etc.

The problem we're having is that we get the day attendant all the time even if the night button is selected. We'd prefer to not use the business schedule, since we usually have a person here to answer phone up to 30 minutes before we officially open that will start answering phones. The individual voice mail boxes work fine, but we are unable to get the Night Attendant to work.

 

[Pepperz]

Set the MErlin Mail to run on the "switch mode", then whenever the night service button is pressed, the night AA is the one that plays. In your current setup, you are sending it to the AA with the night service button, but nothing is telling the VMS which greeting to use, so it defaults to the day AA.

Pepperz@charter.net

 

[Strubbs]

Is that Merlin Legend Mode? The only choices I see are Follow Merlin Legend Mode, Follow Merlin Mail Business Schedule, or Both.

With the Night Switch on, AA doesn't pick up immediately. It waits 6 rings just like during the day. It doesn't seem that the Night Switch is doing anything for us.

Thanks for the help
Cory.

 

[Pepperz]

Assign the lines to be answred in Night Service to the Night Service Group under group assign.

Pepperz@charter.net

 

[thieb]

I'm working on the same system that Strubbs is.

We do have the lines assigned under the NS group, plus we've added the 770 to the NS calling group.

Thanks,
Troy

 

[Pepperz]

Troy, assuming you are assigning CO trunks to the night service group, and have the voice mail calling group assigned as well, then as soon as the calls come in when in night service, they are immediately sent to the Voice MAil system. They will go to AA#1 unless you have multiple AA's. In that case you must assign each line to its respective AA. I assume the 770 is the voice mail calling group.

Pepperz@charter.net

 

[thieb]

Pepperz, yes the 801, 802, 803, etc are assigned to the night service group and the voice mail calling group(770) is also assigned. We were looking to have just one AA that uses the night and day attendents portions to coorespond to the night service button on the main operator.

The end result we'd like to get to is during the day(when the night button is off) AA if the operator group doesn't answer the phone within 6 rings it dumps to a day AA that has our day menu prompts. At night(when the night button is on), we'd like the night AA to answer right away and go to our night menu prompts.

Thanks,
Troy

 

[thieb]

We did some more testing it seems our whole problem is that the night button on the operator station doesn't seem to let the voicemail know that it's in night mode.

Of course, the other question is once we get that to work right, is it possible to have a day attendent wait for 6 rings to pickup and the night attendent pickup right away if we only use one attendent(AA1)?

Thanks,
Troy

 

[Pepperz]

Yes, to the differing pickup times.

Pepperz@charter.net

 

[bobsou]

are you sure the button labeled Night is infact Night Service

 

[thieb]

If we inspect the button it says Night Service and it used to ring phones that were in the night service group before we removed all the extra extensions except the operator at 100.

Troy

 

[thieb]

We ran a report on the night service and one setting grabbed my attention. The is a "coverage control enabled" that is set to off. We thought maybe that might be something we'd need On, but weren't sure.

Thanks,
Troy