Chad, here's my 2 cents.
Resist the tempatation to do it that way. You don't get the automatic length checking and all the other good things that come from entering fixed length strings; and you can make CVP handoff to Unity handlers that do functions like dial by extension much better.
A lot of that crap came from a variety of proprietary PBX and voice mail systems. "Star" on one system means "continue" and means something else on another system.
Try to standardize along the lines of VXML.
Provide clear and unambiguous menus that have less than 5 options. Avoid the "... or stay on the line for customer service" option.
Something like ...
"If you know your 8 digit account number, press 1.
Otherwise, press 2".
If they choose 1, you can have a fixed length "get digits". Self checking and all that good stuff.
And then in another menu of yours ...
"For the auto-attendant, press 1.
For xx, press 2.
For yy, press 3."
Then in auto-attendant ...
"If you know your party's extension, press 1 (leads to a Unity dial by extension handler)
To dial by name, press 2.
To check your voice mail, press 3.
(2 leads to to the Unity dial by name handler. 3 leads to the Unity sign-in handler).
With type-ahead (a natural feature of the VXML standard) regular users will type 1-3 to check their voice mail.
I'd like to hear from other CVP designers. It's not that they can't be coded.
Regards,
Geoff
