Exchange Server 2007: Configure a Unified Messaging Server - Configure the Auto Attendant

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.
2.	From the Navigation Tree, expand the Organization Configuration work center and click Unified Messaging.
3.	Select the UM Auto Attendants to see the current attendants (the default is to have none).
4.	From the Actions pane, select New UM Auto Attendant to open the wizard, shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. Create a new Auto Attendant.
5.	You are asked for a name for the Auto Attendant (AA).
6.	You are asked to associate the AA with a specific dial plan.
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.
8.	You can select the checkbox Create Auto Attendant As Enabled to have the AA active immediately upon completion of the wizard.
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.

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).

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.

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.