Chapter 4: Quick Start Guide
Your voicemail software will allow you to easily create call routing trees to route callers through your voicemail system. This section is intended to give you a quick overview of how to set up a call routing tree from the ground up.
Before You Start
Before adding any new boxes to your system you should first take the time to consider exactly how you would like your system to respond to callers. We will now walk you through the thought process that goes into designing a system, and will take you through the steps involved in getting a system up and running.
The system consists of different types of boxes that perform different functions. You can connect them pretty much any way you would like to. Think of the boxes as the "Lincoln Logs" (tm) - you get to 'put together' the house (voice system) that works best for you.
We will be designing a simple voicemail system for the ABC Company, which is a small business with three departments. We would like the system to allow callers to go directly to a specific department's extension and leave a message in a department Mail Box. Our system will perform the following functions:
1. Answer the phone & play an initial greeting to callers
2. Play a list of available options to callers
3. Play an error message if an incorrect selection is made
4. Route callers to the destination of their choice
5. Take a message from callers
6. End the call
The above list of functions is very simple, but it provides us with a good framework we can refer to while putting together our system. Once we know conceptually what we would like our system to do we can then get into the details of setting up the software perform the desired actions.
Let's look at our first system requirement. We want the system to answer the phone and play an initial greeting to callers. Typically we would want callers to be sent to an Access Box, because an Access Box can play a greeting and also route callers to any other box on the system. But before we begin adding any new boxes we should think ahead and try to organize our box numbering system. Any box of any type can be numbered any number between 0 and 999,999,999, but each number can only be used once. You may delete any existing boxes, but you must keep one of each type of box. The only box that can't be deleted under any circumstance is Client Box 0. To delete a box, bring up the box you wish to delete on the screen, then click on the Delete Box Icon (scissors).
One way to see what box numbers are already in use on your system is to use the Box Finder Icon (magnifying glass icon) from the Activity Bar. Click on this icon to bring up the Box Finder window. In the top portion of this window, click on the Type & Name option, then click on the Search button. In the display window you should now see a list of all box numbers currently in use on your system. For our example we will start numbering boxes at 300.
Add A Box
Now let's go ahead and add an Access Box that will be the initial greeting in our system. To add a new box we must first display a box of the type we will be adding. To bring up an Access Box window, select the Access Box command from the BOXES menu. Once we have an Access Box displayed we can create a new Access Box by clicking on the Insert Box Icon (page) in the Activity Bar. You should now see the Insert Box window, which prompts you for the Lower Box and Upper Box numbers you would like to add. Since we are adding a new Access Box, and we want it to be numbered 300, we will enter 300 in the Lower Box field, and enter 300 in the Upper Box field (or you can just leave the Upper Box blank). We don't care to keep any settings from the current Access Box, so we will select the Use Default Data option before clicking on the OK button.
After clicking on the OK button you should see your new Access Box displayed on the screen. This will be our initial greeting Access Box that callers will hear. Before we go on, let's give our new Access Box a unique name to help us identify it in the future. Go ahead and type "ABC Greeting" in the Box Name field. By now you might be asking yourself this very important question: How does the system know to send callers to Access Box 300 when it answers the phone? Well, the truth is it doesn't know to send callers to Access Box 300 until we tell it to! We need to instruct the computer to send all callers on all lines to Access Box 300, and we do this from the Switch command in the MAINTAIN menu. When you select Switch from the MAINTAIN menu you will bring up the Switch Information window.
In the display window you will now see an entry for each of the available line numbers. To change the initial destination of each line from box 10 (or whatever it is now) to Access Box 300, you will need to click on each line in the line display window one at a time. Click on line 1, and you will see the Line Information window. We want this and all other lines to go to Access Box 300 24 hours a day, so we only need enter 300 in the Destination field in the Business Hours sections of the window. If we wanted, we could set up different call destinations based upon the time of day (see the Switch section in Chapter 20 for more information about the Line Information window). Continue through each of the lines and set the destination in the Business Hours fields to 300. While you are entering 300 into a Destination field, you might also try double-clicking in the Destination field. This will magically bring up the Route Finder window, from which you can select a box number to be entered into the Destination field. This feature is for the non-typists, or those of you who have forgotten that the number of our destination Access Box is 300!
OK, we've now established Access Box 300 as our initial greeting box. This same box will also handle our call routing. But before we set up our Access Box for call routing, we need to create all of the boxes we will eventually link to our initial Access Box. Let's go ahead and create all of the boxes we will need to finish our phone tree. We will need a Mail Box for each of our three departments, and another Access Box which will contain our error message.
Add Mail Boxes
We will add Mail Boxes just like we added our Access Box. First we will need to display a Mail Box window on our screen by selecting the Mail Box command from the BOXES menu. After looking at the box numbers in use on our system, we determine that our new Mail Boxes can be numbered 2000, 2001, and 2002. With a Mail Box on your screen, click on the Insert Box Icon in the Activity Bar. You will see the same Insert Box window as before. In the Lower Box field enter 2000, and in the Upper Box field enter 2002. Also, be sure to select the Use Default Data option since we do not want to copy any of the settings from the currently displayed Mail Box.
You should now have three new Mail Boxes, numbered 2000 to 2002. Using the Box Locator Icons (arrows) in the Activity Bar, click on left-pointing arrow until Mail Box 2000 is the currently displayed box. We should now give our new Mail Boxes names so that they can easily be identified. In the Box Name field of Mail Box 2000, enter "Sales". Now use the arrow icons to get to Mail Box 2001, and in the Box name field enter "Marketing". Finally, in Mail Box 2002 enter "Accounting". Our Mail Boxes are almost, but not quite, complete. To finish off our Mail Boxes, we need to record a greeting and name for each of the three Mail Boxes.
Record Mail Box Greetings
Let's get ourselves back to Mail Box 2000 using the Box Locator Icons. In Mail Box 2000, click on the Greetings button. This brings up the Greetings window. From the Greetings window double click on Greeting 1, which will bring up the Greeting 1 window. While in Greeting 1, click on the Greeting button and record a greeting for this Mail Box, which belongs to the sales department. Click on Greeting. Pick up the receiver of the phone you have plugged into your SoundSet, and click on Record. You will hear a beep - then begin speaking.
Be sure you have a plain phone wire plugged from the opening marked Voice into the Line 1 to your voice board in the computer. Your plain old household telephone should be plugged into the opening marked Phone. Be sure you have the power adapter plugged in. You do not need anything else plugged into the SoundSet at this point. The top switches should be set for Local and Speaker. You might say something like, "You have reached the sales department. Please leave us a message and we'll return your call shortly." After recording a greeting, click on the Save button to save your changes. (See the How to record greetings and prompts section in Chapter 3 for more information on recording.) Now click on the Done button in the Greetings window to save your changes and return to the main Mail Box window. We're almost done setting up Mail Box 2000. The only thing remaining is to record a name. The name you record is the name that will be played to identify a Mail Box when callers perform a directory search. For this box (2000) you can simply record "sales" as the box name. (See the Mail Box Diagram in Appendix C for a complete description of Mail Box options.)
If you feel you are not yet ready to complete Mail Boxes 2001 and 2002 on your own, refer back to the above instructions and give each of the remaining two Mail Boxes an appropriate greeting, box name, and recorded name.
While we are adding boxes we also need to create a new Access Box that will hold the error message that will be played to callers if an incorrect entry is made. With an Access Box on your screen, click once again on the Insert Box Icon (page) in the Activity Bar. We are going to make the error box Access Box number 301, so in the Lower Box field enter 301, and in the Upper Box field enter 301, or leave the Upper Box field blank. Also, be sure once again to check the Use Default Data option before clicking the OK button.
Linking Boxes Together
We have now created all the boxes we need for our example call routing tree. We now need to record appropriate greetings for the Access Boxes, and link the boxes together to complete our call routing. It's usually helpful to set up all of your box links before recording Access Box greetings so that you know what options you are going to announce to callers in your greeting. So let's go ahead and set up our initial greeting in Access Box 300. To begin with, let's delete all of the default key definitions from the display window in the lower portion of Access Box 300. You can do this by highlighting each of the key definitions one at time and clicking the Del Keys button, or your can select all of the key definitions at the same time and hit the Del Keys button.
Add Key Definitions
Now let's add key definitions that will allow callers to go to each of our three Mail Boxes. Since most callers will want to speak with the sales department, we will define a key so that callers can reach the sales department by pressing the 1 key. Click on the Add Keys button to bring up the Add Keys window. If you don't see the Add Keys window you need to verify that your Access Box tweaks options are set to Full Range, Accept Tones in the Tweaks window. In the Lower Key field of the Add Keys window enter 1 (the box number we are defining), and in the Upper Key field enter 1. Check the Destination option and enter our destination box number 2000 into the destination field and click on the Save button. In the Keys display window you should see a new entry for key 1.
Now let's add key definitions for the marketing and accounting departments. We only want to allow callers to access these department Mail Boxes if they know the correct extension, so we will do them a little differently. Click on the Add Keys button. In the Add Keys window type 2001 in the Lower Key field and 2002 in the Upper Key field. This time be sure to select the Direct Mapping to Box option. Since we have selected the Direct Mapping to Box option we do not need to add anything in the Destination field. After clicking on the Save button you should now see two new entries in the Keys display window.
We will finish our key definitions by adding a key that will let Mail Box holders to access their Mail Boxes to review messages. Click once again on the Add Keys button. In the Lower Key field enter a 2, and in the Upper Key window enter a 2. When a caller presses the 2 key we want to send them to the User Access Phantom, which will prompt the caller for a box number and password. Click on the Destination option, and double-click in the Destination field to bring up the Route Finder window. Scroll down in the Route Finder display until you find the phantom "U", which stands for User Access. Double-click on this phantom to enter it into the Destination field, then click on the Save button to save your changes.
Set Up Access Box "Tweaks"
To complete Access Box 300 we will now dive right into the Tweaks options which control the detailed functions of an Access Box. Let's bring up the Tweaks window by clicking on the Tweaks button. The Tweaks window can look overwhelming, but we are only going to concern ourselves with a few of the available options right now. Let's begin in the upper-left corner of the Tweaks window. Enter a 3 in the Maximum Loop field. The 3 indicates that our initial greeting will continue to loop 3 times if no key is pressed by a caller. Enter a 3 in the Maximum Wait field. This means that we want the system to give the caller 3 seconds to respond after the initial greeting is played. Enter a 1 in the Minimum Digits field, because our sales department Mail Box and User Access Phantom are single-key entries, and enter a 4 in the Maximum Digits field, because our longest key definition is a four-digit Mail Box number. In the upper-right corner of the Tweaks window check on the Full Range option, and below that select the Accept Tones option. This allows callers to make a selection at any time during the initial greeting. Click on the OK button to exit the Tweaks window, then click on the Save button in the Access Box to save your changes.
With all of our keys and tweaks defined, we can now go ahead and record our box greeting. Click on the Greeting button and record something like, "You have reached the ABC Company. Press 1 for sales, press 2 to go to your Mail Box, or enter the four-digit extension number of the party you wish to reach".
To finish Access Box 300, double-click on the Default Routing field, and in the Route Finder window double-click on the "H", which is the Hang-up Phantom. This means that if a caller does not make a selection by the time the initial greeting has played 3 times the system will take the caller to the H Phantom, which will say good-bye and disconnect the call. In the Error Routing field enter 301, which is our error message Access Box. It is important to have 'hang-up' boxes throughout your system.
You don't want to have 'endless loops', (boxes defaulting to themselves or to other boxes that default back to first one). A line could be tied up indefinitely if a disconnect does not occur.
The only thing remaining now is to set up our error message Access Box. Use the Box Locator Icons to display Access Box 301. In the Box Name field enter "Error Message". Click on the Name field and record a box name. Now click on the Greeting button and record something like, "Please listen closely to the options and make another selection".
Now click on the Tweaks button. In the Tweaks window set the Maximum Loop to 1, Maximum Wait to 0, Minimum Digits to 0, and Maximum Digits to 0. In the upper-right corner select the Full Range option and Greeting Only. To finish the box, enter 300 in Default Routing field and 301 in the Error Routing field.
Test Your Call Routing
That's it! You are now ready to test your system. With your SoundSet turned on, (switches set to local, speaker) when you click on the Start Call Icon (curved arrow) in the Activity Bar you should hear the message you recorded as your initial greeting in Access Box 300. Or, if you are not using a SoundSet, you will need to call in on the phone line that is attached to port 1 of your voice board. If you press 1 you should hear the greeting to the sales department's Mail Box 2000. If you press 2001 or 2002 you should be sent to the corresponding Mail Box. If you press 2 you should be prompted to enter a Mail Box number and corresponding password.
Congratulations!
You now know how to link boxes to form a call routing tree. We wish you the best as you go about putting together your own system.
When you test your call routing, you might hear a message played that you want to alter, or you could accidentally press a key and go somewhere you had not intended. While you are setting up, you may want to have all your activity be sent to a text file. That way you can close the program and review what happened. See the section Display Activity under the Maintain Menu to set it up.
Simulate an incoming call to test your routing:
When using the SoundSet (see the section on Hardware wiring), you will just click on the little green arrow under Utilities to simulate an incoming call on line 1. You will see Line 1 get a red line around it and you will hear the message you recorded being played through the SoundSet. Take the phone you have plugged into the SoundSet off hook and you can press touchtones to test your call routing without having to use any phone line at all. On the SoundSet, be sure your switches are set to Local and Speaker and have the volume turned on.