Announcements to callers. Help

[full2]

Forgive me if this is a obvious question/answer, but its the first time I have been asked for this while using 3cx.

I have a client that wants to be able to play a announcement to callers for special notices. They need to be able to turn it on and off and record from the phone or soft phone. Asterix had a few different ways I could do this and set a blf to turn on and off etc. I was thinking I could use a call queue or a IVR however I cant find a "dial code" that will allow them to re record the msg.

Example:

IVR ext 803 normally plays, "thank you for calling joes shoes, please wait while we connect your call" then routes to a ring group.

want to then be able to have them dial "*xx803" (whatever) to be able to update the msg with out getting into the admin page.

If im missing something obvious please let me know.

Thanks
Neil

 

[briankayser]

You might have to setup a dummy extension and use the various STATUS options to control which message to play. You could setup your static message(s) on the AWAY and DND statuses and put your dynamic message on the normal AVAILABLE status. You could have the user(s) who need to change the message just dial into that dummy user's voicemail and change the default greeting, they can also change the profile status via the voice menus. The AWAY or DND could play the messages recorded in the extension's VM account, or actually, they could be set to dial an IVR for more options.

You could also setup a phone (that supports multiple SIP accounts) with that dummy extension and program a BLF to change the status. You would have to setup that up directly on the phone and not via 3CX BLF. If you setup the dummy extension as account/line-2 on a phone, you would set the BLF field to dial *31 using account/line-2. Then another to dial *32 and *30 etc. If you do setup the extension on a phone you can set the old-school DND to ON so it doesn't ring. That is on the OTHER tab DND.

On Yealink phones, I've used the arrow keys for things like this. If you go to DSSKey / Programmable keys, and set the Right-arrow to do one thing, and the Left-arrow to do another, etc.

I hope this helps.

 

[full2]

We thought about using the statuses on an extension to play msgs or forward through IVR etc. 2 problems that I can figure out.

1. if we use the voicemail recordings then it just wants to leave a msg and not forward to call other lines (unless im missing something)

2. Forwarding to ivr etc sounds great but how can they record IVRs from the phone not in the admin screen. We manage it.

 

[briankayser]

Ah, I didn't realize you didn't want to record a message. Unfortunately the only workable button during a VM greeting is STAR which forwards to the system operator. So yes, this is a challenge.

I guess it depends on how outside the box you are willing to go. Here is one thought.

Setup your IVR's. Say that IVR #1212 is using the recorded PROMPT joes-shoes.wav and this is the one you want them to be able to change. You could setup a dummy extension 998 for example, and have them dial into that to update the greeting.

Now... you could write a batch file script that periodically runs and checks for a new greeting for 998 and then copy it to joes-shoes.wav.

Kind of like this (this is without the logic to check if it changed):

------------------ UPDATEGREETING.BAT ---------------
COPY C:\ProgramData\3CX\Instance1\Data\Ivr\Voicemail\Data\998\savevmgreeting.wav C:\ProgramData\3CX\Instance1\Data\Ivr\Prompts\joes-shoes.wav

Put on 3CX server and scheduled to run... say every 5 minutes, or one an hour, whatever.

So this would essentially take the outgoing greeting from 998 and copy it over the Joes Shoes greeting. They'd have to wait until the script runs before it would take affect. You could try to get fancier and let them run the script from their PC using UNC paths and setting the correct permissions... but that depends on your environment.

 

[full2]

Well that seems like a solid option and probably the only way that we can make it work aside from them calling us to trip the record on there phone.

Is this not something that businesses use on a regular basis? One would think that it would be pretty straight forward to implement.

 

[briankayser]

This is bothering me now. I went to a college basketball game tonight and on my way home from work I called their GAME TIME number which plays a recording telling you the starting time of the various sporting events each day. So this is basically a Greeting Only recording. Then I was thinking about your dilemma and how this is a similar situation. This is a mailbox they probably re-record everyday and was thinking how much of a pain it would be to do this in 3CX.

So as you've discovered, you can only do a Digital Receptionist if you are going to make the person responsible for recording these an admin. For this GAME TIME recording scenario it is probably a college kid responsible for doing them, not someone I want dinking around as an admin in 3CX. If you do an extension, they could re-record via a phone and a VM PIN, but there is no way to tell it NOT to record messages from callers (no - greeting only option.)

I'm really surprised 3CX hasn't discovered this shortcoming by now. How hard can it be to implement a Greeting Only mailbox option? I'm going to keep looking into this just for the sake of "there has to be a way" to do this. It really is a simple thing!!

My only work-around suggestion is this:
Setup that dummy extension, set the "Email Options" on the VOICE MAIL tab to "No email notification". Let them record and re-record the outbound message as desired but tell then not to say anything about leaving a message. There will be the BEEP after the greeting is played, but oh-well I guess. The caller will just hear dead air and if they talk they will be recorded.

Then setup a batch file script that deletes the files out of: C:\ProgramData\3CX\Instance1\Data\Ivr\Voicemail\Extensions\998 (for example). Maybe run it once a day just to keep any messages that are left from growing out of control. They will probably just be someone breathing until they hang up.

I thought maybe setting to VM to email-only, but don't set an email address - but that still left the message files behind with an error in an XML file that it couldn't send the email

This would work in my GAME TIME scenario, however I get the feeling it may not for you because I think you wanted to give them dialing options afterward.


OR I guess, they could use Audacity and have them re-record the greeting files directly, but again, risky giving them access to all the IVR recordings...

-- hair pulling out --

 

[briankayser]

All I can really think of is back to my idea of using a dummy extension just so that a low-end user can use a phone to record and re-record greetings on it, then schedule a task to copy that greeting to the IVR.

This test I did (below) copied Source-File-A.txt only if it changed. I scheduled it to run one, but repeat every 5 minutes indefinitly. It only takes under 1 second to actually run and maybe 1 - 2 seconds if the file changes and it actually needs to copy it.

xcopy c:\test\Folder-A\Source-File-A.txt c:\test\Folder-B\Source-File-B.txt /d /Y

 

[full2]

You are correct we do want to have the normal call flow after the announcement recording plays and really do not want the client to have admin access to the system. Would defiantly be real bad idea and what hair I have left would be gone.

We are working on testing your script idea and moving and having them record into a status msg and copying it over. Sounds like at this point its the only option.

Thanks for the info
Neil