Transfer to voice mail after you pick up a call

[admin_2]

Can this feature possible on Unity and how do you set it up? Many thanks.<br>If phone A calls phone B and phone B picks up the phone but wants phone A to leave a VM, phone B transfers phone A to VM # so phone A can leave a message.<br><br>

[Anil Verma]

I have not tried this, but it should be possible for Phone B to transfer the call to Extension for phone B with "#2" appended to the digits.

[calmichael]

It would seem that this idea wouldn't work as CallManager doesn't know what a #2 does directly.

One client has published internally to it's users that by
using the Unity main AA number plus the number that the
caller should be transferred to, plus #2 will result in
a transfer to voicemail since the main AA allows direct
dialing to an extension.

It's a work around. . .

Hope Unity 3.0 addresses this. . .

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[#4]

I know it's tempting to think of this as a voice mail feature since it's the vocie mail greeting you want to get, but what you're asking for is a switch feature, not a Unity feature so it would be impossible for us to deliver this in Unity 3.0 or any version of Unity.

The call is not presented to Unity until it forwards to us from an extension (busy/rna) or someone calls us directly. We have no way of knowing what that user wants to do (i.e. get the opening greeting, check messages, forward a call to their greeting etc...). Apart from reading the mind of the person issuing the call (something not possible via TAPI) we can't make assumptions.

What you need is a switch feature (as many PBXs out there have) that allows users to indicate to the switch that you'd like to tell the voice mail system this is a call forwarded from a particualr extension. Folks like Panasonic, NEC, Harris, etc... all do this with special phone feature codes (i.e. you dial "77" then the number of the extension). They send the call to voice mail and tell us it's forwarded RNA which we then act on sending the call right to the greeting for the user.

And yes, I have seen some nifty stuff from the phone side of things using TAPI and the XLM enabled phones that allow you to route calls to greetings directly using a mechanism not too far off from what I describe above. I have no idea when this will be available to the public and/or who will be rolling it out, but I know folks are working on it.


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[#5]

Again, I'm new at this . . .

I've tried the above fix, but have noticed one caveat. On the transfer (at least on my switch), Phone B needs to dial ##2. If I don't put that first "#" in, the system is asking phone B for their voice mail password . . .

[#6]

That's correct... if you call the voice mail number from a phone that corresponds to a subscriber's extension, we're going to automatically log you in to check messages. You can either do the # thing you already figured out or you can get fancy with a routing rule and have folks access voice mail to do these transfers using that number instead of the normal number... the routing rule would be setup such that all calls that forward into Unity from that number (i.e. a phantom extension) go to the opening greeting directly instead of doing the usual "attempt sign in" conversation.

You can decide what you folk's think is easier... if you have people doing a LOT of these direct type transfers its probably worth setting up the phantom extension and the routing rule...


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[#7]

I've seen it mentioned on this board . . . what is meant by a phantom extension?

[dgrant]

A phantom extension is an IP Phone configured in CallManager with a dummy MAC address. Since the phone will never be registered to the CM, whenever you call this extension, you will automatically be forwarded to the CFNA number configured (Unity Pilot Number in this case).

-Dustin

[#9]

I've considered doing that, but wondered if it would cause any problems. What situations, besides this one, have you seen warrant using a phantom extension (this is my first install)?

[#10]

There are several situations in which phantom extensions (aka "virtuals") can be useful, within the phone system or the voicemail system.

For example, not every employee of a company necessarily has a physical telephone set. You may want to have voicemail boxes for regional sales managers who work out of their homes. Create a range of phantom extensions for these folks in Unity with transfer set to No.

An example of phantom extensions in the telephone system might be used to create a direct faxmail number for each person. Create a phantom extension programmed to forward all calls to the fax server. Assign a DID line to point to the phantom, and all calls to that line will go straight to faxmail without the need for a physical phone at that extension.

[#11]

Thanks for the pointers. I appreciate the assistance, as this is my first install and it is for 100+ phones with CM and UM across multiple locations.

[#12]

Just as a follow up on this. The phantom extensions work great and give more functionality. I have used them to:

1. Transfer directly to Unity's Opening Message (like Jeff mentioned above).

2. Give someone a voice mail only account, then setup the phantom to forward to voice mail. This way they can transfer to her extension without having to get there with more hassle.

3. Give the receptionists the ability to transfer selected calls directly to a cell phone via extension rather than trying to remember the phone number(s). FYI, when doing this on the CFNA field in CM, you need to specify a Calling Search Space (if they are in use) or you get a fast busy.

Thanks again.