Digital Receptionist Announcements

[dredd0606]

Hi Guys,

I'm trying to find a way to do announcements as separate recordings in the 3CX digital receptionist. In other soft-pbxs, you can actually create a destination called an announcement, that will simply play a recording and then direct the call to another destination (to an extension, VMail, another announcement, or an IVR). However, the closest I can get in 3CX is to create a digital receptionist with no menu options and a timeout of 1 sec. This works, however the timeout creates an awkward moment of silence that could easily be mistaken for a disconnect. Any ideas?

Before everyone asks, I'm running 15.5.9348.3 (SP3 latest)

Dredd

 

[Michael Groom]

As far as i know, the work around you are using is the only way to do this.

 

[dredd0606]

That is unfortunate. Announcements are used quite often to give hours of operation, or custom messages at the start of an IVR without requiring re-recording the IVR recording itself. Seems a bit of an oversight to not support them without using an awkward work around.

 

[Michael Groom]

That is unfortunate. Announcements are used quite often to give hours of operation, or custom messages at the start of an IVR without requiring re-recording the IVR recording itself. Seems a bit of an oversight to not support them without using an awkward work around.

I can see your point but most other pbx do not give you thousands of extensions to work with. I use this on systems daily and have no issues.

 

[dredd0606]

Oh, I agree. I'm not saying this breaks 3CX, just seems like a strange oversight.

 

[AlexanderHanna]

I think if 3CX can allow you to set the time out to 0 sec (after the message is played) it would be perfect.

However, saying that, I have no issues with setting it to 1 sec. One thing I would suggest is that you ensure that your audio file has no silence at the end of it. I always use Audacity to trim unwanted silence from my audio files especially at the end.

Alexander

 

[Konos]

No you're right Dredd, it is a huge oversight and along with the many other oversights, it does break it.

Its pretty hard to believe that this kind of workflow hasn't been implemented especially given that this is a paid product. Call flow control with miscellaneous end points like independent voicemails are a really important feature set that is missing from this product.

Sadly, I've inherited this thing so I've come here to find an answer to the same problem you have... I had already come to the same conclusion about shoehorning the Digital Receptionist module.

I can see your point but most other pbx do not give you thousands of extensions to work with

What does that mean if you don't mind me asking? what are these extensions you speak of? Are there modules to be added on for improved functionality?

 

[dredd0606]

What Michael is saying is that most other PBX's are restricted in the number of extensions (phones, softphones) they allow, which is simply untrue for other soft PBXs (FreePBX does not limit either, neither does Fusion), nor does it have anything to do with the issue at hand. There are several strange shortcomings with 3CX, none of the "breaks" the system per say, but are basic things you'd expect in a PBX based on what else is available in the market (such as the ability to have a BLF for queues, the ability to rename "Shared Parking", the ability to clone or duplicate BLF settings to new extensions, etc.). Call them Quality of Life improvements or whatever you want, but at the end of the day they are missing from 3CX while being present in most other PBXs.

What sets 3CX apart and puts 3CX on top despite these shortcomings are the UC options, the softphones, the UI, provisioning (generally speaking, there are some pain points here), the included web-conferencing, and other features that other PBXs do not have.