Transfer straight to voicemail without rining phone

[pmccloud]

I am trying to find a way to let someone transfer a caller to voicemail without ringing the phone first and waiting for the no answer timeout. We have tried doing a transfer to voicemail, then the persons extension, but that rings the phone again since Unity is configured to ring the phone, and not go straight to voicemail. I am not sure if this can be done on the Call Manager side or the Unity side.

Thanks.

[jtowne]

Ahh . . .

Sounds like what you want is a DVM button? (like on a Lucent) It is not there- (along with many other standard phone set features)

We came up with a clever trick. Create a dummy phone off a fake MAC on you CM box. Set the VM box setting in the config. to what the user would normal have, and then set forward busy/no answer to your unity extension. Now when you dial that number/transfer to that extension- it will go directly to the users mailbox. The down side is that you have to do this for every extension you want to have DVM for.

TIP: make it easy on you users, if you normally have 4 digit extension of 4500 for example, create each fake phone number as 845XX.

Than to transfer to vm of Mr. Doe, tell you users to hit transfer, then 8 plus four digit extension. Now they don’t have to learn a whole set of new numbers.

Hope that helps!

[Vance Krier]

It's a pain, but doable. The following links give a little more info. I've implemented the first method several times and it works nicely.

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/788/AVVID/addl_ext_unity_mailbox.html

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/788/AVVID/transfer_direct_box.html

Hope this helps,

Vance

[dmainzer]

We are using CCM 3.2 and Unity 2.4.6, and here's the procedure we use:

When the call comes in, press the transfer softkey.

Either dial the pilot number for the voicemail directly, or a speed dial that has been set up for it.

If the phone is attached to a mailbox, you will be asked for your password. Press "#" to get to the main greeting.

Dial the extension number of the person whose box you need to transfer to, press "#", then "2".

Press transfer again, and the caller hears the mailbox owner's greeting and can leave a message.