Professional Documents
Culture Documents
MAY TECH ■
VOICE MAIL
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.
■ MAY TECH
VOICE MAIL
MAY TECH ■
VOICE MAIL
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.