Configure the Auto Attendant
The
Auto Attendant is helpful as a guide for users that call. Often you
might find that when you call automated systems, the Auto Attendant is
not helpful. The reason is that you ultimately want to speak to a human
and feel the Auto Attendant is acting as a barrier to your ultimate
goal. However, some situations are perfect for an automated guide.
UM
is one of those situations because, if guided properly, you can
accomplish the tasks of speaking to the person you want, leaving a
voicemail, or of checking your voicemail, calendar, and so on.
To start, we have to create a new Auto Attendant. To do that, perform the following:
1. | Open the EMC.
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2. | From the Navigation Tree, expand the Organization Configuration work center and click Unified Messaging.
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3. | Select the UM Auto Attendants to see the current attendants (the default is to have none).
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4. | From the Actions pane, select New UM Auto Attendant to open the wizard, shown in Figure 1.
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5. | You are asked for a name for the Auto Attendant (AA).
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6. | You are asked to associate the AA with a specific dial plan.
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7. | You
want to add the extension numbers that callers can use to reach the AA
(up to 16 extensions). The number of digits for the AA doesn’t have to
match the dial plan you have selected because direct calls to the AA
are allowed.
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8. | You can select the checkbox Create Auto Attendant As Enabled to have the AA active immediately upon completion of the wizard.
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9. | You
can select the checkbox Create Auto Attendant As Speech-enabled, which
is not the default setting. Without this option, enabled users can only
respond to the system or prompts with touchtone phone input. However,
with it, enabled users can use voice input, too.
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After
you have the AA created, you can right-click it and select Properties
or select it from the Actions pane. You are presented with six tabs
that you can configure even further for the AA.
General
The General tab presents some basic information about the AA, such as the status, associated dial plan, and last time modified.
You
can configure the extension numbers to associate with the AA here if
you didn’t do so during its creation or you can add, edit, or remove
extensions.
The option to speech-enable the AA is on this tab, and you can turn that on or off.
There
is also an option to use the DTMF fallback AA. DTMF stands for dual
tone multi-frequency and can be used only if the Speech-enable checkbox
is selected. A DTMF AA is used when the AA cannot understand the speech
being used. The DTMF doesn’t work from speech navigation but requires
keypad input. It is recommended that you use either a DTMF fallback or
include an operator extension so that the person calling has the
ability to navigate the system with something other than voice (in case
she has difficulty with voice automated systems).
Note
To
create a DTMF AA, you simply create an AA with all the same
configuration options that you have for your front-running AA. The only
difference is that you do not speech-enable it. Then you select the
Browse button off the General tab to use this DTMF AA.
Greetings
Here we see that we can create a variety of greetings for our attendant to use. As you can see in Figure 2, you configure greetings for business hours and nonbusiness hours. You can add an information announcement.
You
can also configure the main menu prompt information for both business
and nonbusiness hours. The main menu prompt is actually your list of
options for users to choose to get started. For example, the prompt
might say, “For Sales press or say 1.”
Times
You
might have noticed in the Greetings tab that there are business and
nonbusiness hours. The Times tab enables you to establish the company
business/nonbusiness hours. You can configure your time zone.
You
can also configure the holidays that your company recognizes so that
the system knows which days are not workdays (although ordinarily they
would be). During the process of adding holiday dates, you can also
include specific greetings for each holiday so that you can provide
instructions on the number of days your company might be closed or
simply provide a holiday greeting.
Features
The Features tab, shown in Figure 3,
includes features we’ve addressed for users, but this is from the
perspective of the AA and persons calling in from the outside.
You
can choose the language the caller hears when contacting the AA for
this dial plan. By default, if you installed the English version of
Exchange, the English language setting is chosen. However, you can go
to the Microsoft website and download additional Unified Messaging
language packs for Exchange Server 2007. Although every language is not
available, there are many to choose from.
You
can input an operator extension, which is used to connect a caller to
an actual operator or perhaps a UM-enabled mailbox to leave a voicemail.
You can select the following checkboxes:
Allow Caller to Transfer to Users—
Enables users in the dial plan to transfer calls to other users in the
same dial plan. After you select this, you can configure the section
callers can contact.
Allow Callers to Send Voice Messages— Enables callers to send voice messages to users.
In
the Callers Can Contact section, you can configure the caller to be
able to connect with users within the dial plan, anyone in the default
global address list, or anyone in this address list, where you have to
browse for the address list of your choice. The matched name selection
method can be inherited from the dial plan, or you can configure the
method to include the Title, Department, Location, Alias, or None.
You
can also configure the caller to allow transfer to operator during
business hours or allow transfer to operator after business hours.
Key Mapping
You
can select the Enable Business Hours Key Mapping and the Enable
Non-business Hours Key Mapping checkboxes. Here you can provide the
connections for when users type or say a response. For example, if they
press or say 1, they are sent to the extensions you provide. You might have one extension set for business hours and one set for nonbusiness hours.
If you click the Add button, you can see the Key Mapping Entry options (shown in Figure 4).
From here you can determine what key must be pressed or expression said
(and you can configure multiple phrases to ensure the system
understands the response). Next, you configure the action that will
occur. Perhaps you want an audio file to play (in the event it is
nonbusiness hours), and sometimes you want the person transferred to
another extension or another AA that is configured for that selection
to handle additional choices.
Note
You
might connect with a primary AA that presents you with a group of
options from which to choose. You make your selection, but now you are
dealing with a different department and different options for you to
choose. The way to accomplish this is to have your first AA pass you
off to another AA that might be defined for Sales, Research, and so on.
That AA might pass you off to still another AA until you narrow down
for what or who you are looking.
Dialing Restrictions
This
tab enables you to select the checkboxes Allow Calls to Users Within
the Same Dial Plan or Allow Calls to Extensions. Then you can configure
for the AA the incountry/region rule groups or international rule
groups, which were already created for the dial group. You are just
selecting the ones that apply to the AA.