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setup
voice mail & fax
If you want to project a professional image to the world, you’ll want to establish voice mail and a
fax system for your office so that, should no one be in the office, there’s a virtual representative
always at hand. In this guide we detail the options that are available to you to set up a system that
fits your needs. You’ll find that it’s simpler than you thought it would be.

oice mail is an essential technol- cluding FaxWorks (Thought Communica-

V ogy for any office today. In a small


office, you might be able to get by
with an answering machine. But
if you’re trying to project a more corporate
tions, www.faxtalk.com) and SuperVoice
(Pacific Image Communications, www.su-
pervoice.com)—are limited to controlling a
single phone line. A few, such as TalkWorks
image, an answering machine doesn’t cut it. Pro (Symantec, www.symantec.com), can
One alternative is to take an old comput- handle two lines. Even fewer (SuperVoice
er—or buy a new, low-end system—and Communications Server is one) can handle
throw in a couple of voice modems and more.
voice mail software. The resulting voice One way to increase your options is to get
mail system will project the image of a ma- separate programs for faxing and voice mail,
jor corporation. While you’re at it, use the a strategy that will let you use a separate line
same system for fax service—a notable im- for faxing even if the programs support only
provement over using a standard fax ma- one line each. It’s hard to find a voice mail
chine. program that doesn’t include faxing, but in
The best strategy for setting up a com- most cases, you can turn off the fax fea-
puter for voice mail and fax depends large- tures or ignore them. Most fax programs,
ly on your telephone system: how many in- however, don’t include voice mail. The fax
coming lines you have, how busy they are lar hardware and software you have, you and voice mail programs that we’ve tested
and whether you have a phone switch (a de- shouldn’t find it hard to map the suggestions together co-existed successfully without
vice that lets you add more extension lines here to the specific commands and features problems as long as they weren’t both as-
within the office to supplement the actual in your chosen hardware and software. For signed the same modem. But check with
number of external lines connected to the the purposes of this article, we’ll assume both vendors beforehand to find out
phone company). that you want to use standard modems with whether there’s a compatibility problem.
In this article, we’ll cover a range of al- voice and fax features rather than specialised If you don’t have a phone switch, there’s
ternatives, from a single incoming phone line hardware. little more to say. You need to pick soft-
with no phone switch to as many as 8 in- You can find any number of programs ware that can support not just the number
coming phone lines with a phone switch and that work with a standard voice modem for of lines you have now, but the number you
as many as 32 internal extensions. Although both fax and voice mail, complete with mul- expect to need in the foreseeable future.
details will vary depending on the particu- tiple mailboxes. Most such programs—in- You should also make sure the software

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will work with the voice modems you


choose. Look for a list of supported modems
on the software vendor’s Web site.
With more than two modems—or even if
you’re adding a second modem in a sys-
tem that uses a serial mouse—you’ll have to
THE AUTO-ATTENDANT
worry about hardware conflicts. PCs offer f your voice mail program dard phone.
four serial ports, but com 3 normally uses the
same IRQ as com 1, and com 2 normally uses
the same IRQ as com 4. With these standard
settings, you can’t have an active connection
I includes an auto-attendant
f e a t u re and your switch
includes the ability to trans-
fer calls, you can put together a more
An auto-attendant feature will not
only give the caller a way to find the
right extension but will dial the exten-
sion using the switch’s call transfer
on both com 1 and com 3 or on both com sophisticated messaging system. First, feature. Most auto-attendants will also
2 and com 4 at the same time. make sure that the software and the monitor the call to see whether it is
Any voice mail program that supports switch support the same feature for picked up. If not, they tell the switch
more than two modems will also offer a transferring calls. A common choice, to hang up the line, return the caller
way to sidestep this conflict. This is typically for example, is a flashhook com- to the voice mail program and give
accomplished by way of a multi-modem mand, which is the equivalent of tap- the caller an opportunity to leave a
card, which includes multiple modems us- ping the hang-up button on a stan- message in the appropriate mailbox.
ing one IRQ, or by way of a multi-port
card,which offers four, eight or more serial
port connections for external modems. Make into one of the switch’s phone lines, just as sition that you’ll rarely, if ever, need to make
sure you know what the solution is for the it would plug into a phone jack coming di- as many simultaneous connections to the
software you’ve chosen and that you get rectly from your phone company. The key outside world as you have phones in your
hardware to fit that solution. The software difference is that with a switch you don’t office. As long as that assumption is true, you
vendor may even sell the appropriate mo- need a separate modem for each line from can conveniently share a small number of
dem or multi-port card. If so, life may be eas- the phone company. And conversely, you external lines from the phone company’s
ier if you get both the hardware and software don’t need a separate outside line for each central office (CO) among some larger num-
from the same source. modem. ber of internal extensions. Incoming calls
If you’re mixing programs—one for fax If you have more than two voice lines, from any of the CO lines can connect to
and one for voice mail—you may need a you should seriously consider getting a any of the internal extensions and outgoing
more creative solution. One possibility is phone switch. For this discussion, we’ll as- calls can connect to any of the CO lines. As
to get USB modems from a company such sume you have a programmable switch that a bonus, you can dial from any of the internal
as Zoom Telephonics. This assumes that can accept standard phones and modems— extensions to any other without having to
the system you’re using is new enough to of- a description that applies, for example, to pay for a phone call.
fer USB support, the operating system Panasonic’s Digital Super Hybrid systems A typical switch for a small office will al-
(preferably Windows 98) offers USB support (www.panasonic.com/consumer_electron- low from 2 to 8 CO lines and 8 to 32 inter-
and that the voice mail and fax software ics/communication_systems/index.htm). nal extensions. (If your phone system needs
will work with USB modems. Note that if you have an all-digital switch, are much greater than this, your voice mail
you will not be able to use modems with it needs will probably outstrip the capabilities
A WORD ABOUT SWITCHES unless the switch can support analogue of voice mail software and standard voice
Most of these issues also apply if you have ports as well. modems.) Most switches also provide some
a phone switch because each modem plugs Phone switches are based on the propo- level of programmability, often by way of a
proprietary digital phone using the keypad
and LCD. Typically, you can designate which
internal line should get the incoming calls
from each CO line, which extension a call
should bounce to if there is no answer on
a given internal line and whether calls should
be treated differently depending on the day
of the week or the time of day.

VOICE MAIL SCENARIOS


Consider what you can do with just these
commands programmed into the switch, a
receptionist to direct calls and a voice mail
program that handles just one line and of-
fers nothing beyond answering machine
features with multiple mailboxes.
The modem controlled by the voice mail
program gets plugged into one of the in-
ternal lines. You can set each CO line to
send all incoming calls to the receptionist’s
extension from 9 to 5 on weekdays but send
them to the voice modem at all other times.

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Then you can define the receptionist’s line a message for anyone else by calling an ex- proach in a small office is simply to exper-
to bounce the call to the voice modem tension, getting bounced to the voice mail iment. Make your best guess as to how many
should the receptionist not answer or if the system, dialing the mailbox number (which internal lines you need for voice mail and
line is busy. can be the same as the extension) and leav- then see how often callers get a busy signal
With this scenario, you can have a rea- ing a message. The recipient can pick up all instead of voice mail. If they do very often,
sonably complete phone answering system. the messages at any time by calling the voice you should put in another voice mail line.
Simply leave an appropriate message in the mail system’s extension and punching in One last important detail is to arrange
main mailbox of the voice mail program, in- his or her mailbox number and password. with your phone company to tie your lines
structing the caller to dial the extension for together in what’s often called a hunt group,
the person or department desired. If there HOW MANY LINES? bouncing calls to any free incoming CO line
are few enough people in your office, you One voice mail line can be enough to han- when a dialed line is busy. You can then
can simply provide a list of names and ex - dle the entire office if there are not too many hand out a single phone number that peo-
tensions in the main greeting message. If CO lines and phone traffic is light enough. ple can dial for all incoming calls.
there are too many names for this to work If you have only two CO lines, for example,
and no provisions in the program to help it’s unlikely that the voice mail system would FAX
callers find the extension they need, one need to handle more than one call at a time. You create a dedicated fax line either by
workaround is to intruct callers to dial the If you have three or more CO lines, use an bypassing the phone switch or by pro-
extension if they know it, and to provide a auto-attendant feature (see sidebar) to han- gramming one of the CO lines coming into
few departmental extensions that you can list dle each call and need internal voice mail, the switch to direct it to a local extension
in the main message. Each departmental then you probably need at least two voice with a fax modem plugged in.
mailbox can serve two or more people. mail lines. Don’t forget to program the switch You’ll find that some fax programs offer
When a caller dials an extension, it will take to bounce incoming calls from the primary special features for use over a LAN. For
the caller to the voice mailbox without ever voice mail extension (when it’s busy) to the those that don’t, you can set the program to
ringing the extension. The caller will think second voice mail extension, from the sec- print incoming faxes automatically on a
that there was no answer on the extension, ond extension to the third, and so on. shared network printer or run a remote con-
after which the phone system went to the Unfortunately, there are no good rules of trol program such as pcAnywhere on the
proper voice mailbox to play an individual thumb for how many voice mail lines you network. Run the host on the fax server,
greeting. will need. There is a formula for calculating and users will be able to log on over your
Having multiple mailboxes available also the number of lines, based on the number network, check for faxes, read them over the
gives you internal voice mail. If you program of calls in peak periods and what percent- network and print them out if needed. As a
each extension to bounce a call to the voice age of calls you’re willing to lose to busy sig- final touch, add a sheet-fed scanner to the
mail number if it’s busy or if there’s no an- nals, but gathering the data you need for the fax and voice mail system and you’ll be able
swer, then anyone in your office can leave calculation is not a trivial task. The best ap- to use it to send faxes as well.

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