Implemented Group Voicemail

justin.laferriere

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In other IP-PBX systems, there's an option to enable a general voicemail box for the group, and it's an option that I've been requested to set up for a client, as their old phone system was capable of doing so.

It would work along the lines of when a group receives a voicemail, it activates the MWI light on the phone of the users in that group to notify them of the message, as well as showing the new voicemail in the 3CXPhone software for the users in that group (possibly with a different header to differentiate the group voicemails from the personal voicemails). When a user in that group listens to the general voicemail, it would turn the MWI light off.

I know that there's the option of sending the voicemails to an email address, but I still feel like this would be a beneficial feature to have, and would help transition users from other phone systems to 3CX.
 
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Yeah, this is not a Ring Group voicemail. As GLeonard states, it's an email blast. It lacks all the basic features of voicemail. You know... like a greeting.
 
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I also agree this implementation is not really what was requested.

We have previously created a separate extension called voicemail and then users can access the voicemail for that extension from any phone (like a Group Voicemail). You'd dial 66 or 666 (depending upon your setup) and then enter the number for the extension called voicemail and its unique voicemail PIN number. As for alerting multiple users to the fact that a voicemail has been left for the "group" voicemail we setup e-mail notification for that extension but enter an e-mail distribution group address so that all members of the group know that a message has been left. As the voicemail is setup as an extension it is also easy to change the greeting if required.
 
I'm sorry but the way this "Group voice mail" feature is implemented in update 1...is far from workable. I was very excited when I saw it, until I saw how it was put together. It's simply another email that distributes to several people?? How is that a workable solution to a shared voicemail box? If 10 people are associates with this shared voicemail, how are they supposed to know WHO calls back the customer that left the voicemail? No one knows who actually handled that voicemail, which means all 10 will have to listen to it and more than likely, several will end up dealing with it or assume someone else took care of it and no one calls the customer back. To me, it's still a mess.

What needs implemented is a proper shared voicemail system. A good example is one that can be assigned to extensions or extension groups and shown somehow in the webclient as a shared voicemail box that also would show the voicemail, indicate which voicemails have been dealt with and by whom and ability for one or several extensions to be able to delete past voicemails. If an extension belongs to several shared voicemails, they would see the different ones they're members of.

I also agree this implementation is not really what was requested.

We have previously created a separate extension called voicemail and then users can access the voicemail for that extension from any phone (like a Group Voicemail). You'd dial 66 or 666 (depending upon your setup) and then enter the number for the extension called voicemail and its unique voicemail PIN number. As for alerting multiple users to the fact that a voicemail has been left for the "group" voicemail we setup e-mail notification for that extension but enter an e-mail distribution group address so that all members of the group know that a message has been left. As the voicemail is setup as an extension it is also easy to change the greeting if required.

Completely agree with both these points, this isn't group voicemail functionality hoped for.

For Yealink phone users, we found a better method was to create an extension for the voicemail, then add that voicemail as a second account to the phones, this done at a template level so you could assign out various group voicemails depending on the template used. This give you the benefit of having a voicemail notification displayed on the phone if the group voicemail has an unread message, and you can access both mailboxes from the voicemail button which would connect to the respective voicemails of any that had unread messages in.
 
Agreed also, not what we were hoping for either. It needs to be re-thought !!!
 
hello everyone.

I have an idea for the voicemail system.

Rather then every time we great an ext. the voicemail is created automatically we can seperat them.

we can great a category called voicemail, like queue, ring group...

in this case we can creat a voicemail with a giving ID, PIN
with all the options like custom greeting, VMI, email, etc...

and them you can assing the voicemail to an ext. or to a group (multiple exts).
an email will be sent to all the members of this voicemail.

you can access by dialing 999 enter ID and PIN, or you can program a button as 999,ID,PIN

Hope this breaf idea works

Thank you
 
Poor show 3CX, this issue has been around since what, 2006? 11 years later and you still haven't developed a satisfactory group voicemail feature with MWI's... please, when are you planning on developing this?
 
Agreed, its disappointing to think that this an acceptable implementation for group voicemail.
 
I believe what the true request is an option for SIP Forking, in which you could program an account 2 on the phone for multiple extensions. The lack of this forces admins to create unsupported custom templates. A general delivery mailbox would be easily implemented if 3cx would just add that additional drop down that lists other extensions for account.2.
 
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Hi , same problem here , people are using call center with queue and after 120 secs they want a group voicemail , we also setup a second extension with snom phone and hidden identity which is really cool because end user could not even make a call with the dummy extension , in fact it was really a good solution but once we face a problem with 3cx sip service crashing , 3cx simply refuse to help us bacause we are using custom template.....
 
Since 3CX didn't really implement the request, should someone start another IDEA thread that can be voted for? I would vote for it since we need this feature. We haven't decided to go with 3CX yet, but I can tell that the "fix" really isn't what is needed.
 
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To use the Group Voicemail as designed we only need the ability to specify a Custom Greeting.

We can't just drop callers into the default voicemail prompt after holding, we need to let them know that there are no agents available at this time and to leave a message after the prompt and someone will call them back as soon as possible.
 
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I'm sorry but the way this "Group voice mail" feature is implemented in update 1...is far from workable. I was very excited when I saw it, until I saw how it was put together. It's simply another email that distributes to several people?? How is that a workable solution to a shared voicemail box? If 10 people are associates with this shared voicemail, how are they supposed to know WHO calls back the customer that left the voicemail? No one knows who actually handled that voicemail, which means all 10 will have to listen to it and more than likely, several will end up dealing with it or assume someone else took care of it and no one calls the customer back. To me, it's still a mess.

What needs implemented is a proper shared voicemail system. A good example is one that can be assigned to extensions or extension groups and shown somehow in the webclient as a shared voicemail box that also would show the voicemail, indicate which voicemails have been dealt with and by whom and ability for one or several extensions to be able to delete past voicemails. If an extension belongs to several shared voicemails, they would see the different ones they're members of.

I second this feature. The current group email doesn't help us manage the group voicemails. This is a critical feature that's missing in 3CX that other systems have already.
 
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+1 We need the ability for a generic mailbox that can either be assigned to multiple phones or checked from any phone. Blasting voicemail to several different boxes that aren't linked does not help anyone as then the client has no idea if someone called them back, etc.
 
This is not a solution.
We have recently come over from a Splicecom installation which handles departmental / group calls & voicemails very well.

The issue we are having with 3CX is the lack of departmental call & voicemail history.
I've tried to offer users solutions of accessing voicemail via the handset but this gives rise to the problem of being offered the newest message first by default and the way my users work is by responding to the oldest message first, not the newest.

I've also tried the option of having voicemail sent as an attachment to a general dept. email with the caller ID & timestamp in the email body, but this has issues of them not being able to listen to the voicemails as they don't have soundcards & headphones. Blaring out voicemail via speakers in an open office is just not an option.

I'm finding there are many other 3cx users / installers with the same issue of not having any feature for shared voicemail or call history. 3cx responding by stating the solution is to send to multiple email addresses is a very poor solution that leaves the email recipient with no indication of whether the call has been dealt with other than to contact the customer and ask. Not a great solution if they get numerous calls to ask if the problem they originally called with has been dealt with, it just shows how poor the internal communication is in our company.

Come on 3CX - you've been promising a solution to this since 2006 - it's time you listened to the basics of what people need from a phone system.
 
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The current "solution", I don't see how they can sort of consider that a solution for a shared or group voicemail box. Other systems have this without a problem and it works fine. In the extension controller, you select the voicemail that the extension should be associated to, whether it's a group shared voicemail or they receive their own individual voicemail box. If it's a shared voicemail, every extension associated with that receives notifications on the phone that there's a new voicemail and if someone listens to the voicemail and deletes it, it reflects that on every phone associated.

This takes care of multiple people accessing the shared voicemail as well as knowing if they've been handled or not. Sending them to an email address doesn't remotely address this at all. Again, come on 3CX and get with it. This is one of two critically important features that I know many folks want fixed. The other is being able to access shared parking from within the 3cx mobile app like you do from within the desktop client.
 
Guys, I see far too much complaining being expressed here. I wonder how many of you have actually tried the solution that three of us in this thread alone have suggested.

Just create a virtual extension and assign it as a secondary account on your phone. Then route your ring groups and call queues to fail over to this virtual extension. If you do this, the virtual extension will do EVERYTHING everyone has asked for in this entire thread. For example, you will get the MWI light on your phone when someone leaves a voicemail in the virtual extension's voicemail box. If anyone in the group listens to the group voicemail, the MWI will turn off so you don't have multiple people chasing the same voicemail. 3CX can optionally send an email to a distribution group or just display the MWI, so don't infer that the only option is an email blast. Further, when you press the voicemail button on your phone it will show you how many voicemails are in your personal voicemail box AND how many are in the virtual extension box. You can choose to listen to a voicemail from either box.

So what is all this griping about? At the risk of bringing down the wrath of the 3CX community, this sounds a little like laziness and I don't think 3CX has a solution for that. Yes, it takes a "little" effort to setup a second account on several phones, but it works perfectly. You may choose to provision a second account via a custom phone template, but rather than spreading FUD, let's be clear that a custom template is nice, but it's not a requirement to setup a secondary account on your phones.

It seems as if what many are really complaining about is not whether a excellent group voicemail box can be setup in 3CX (because it certainly can), rather, this is complaining about the small amount of effort needed to implement it. If you feel it necessary to express that an easier way is needed, that would be fair, but it does not serve the community to suggest that it cannot be done in a very straightforward way.

It is true, there are some limitations to the built-in group voicemail box feature, but that's not the only option available to you. It is also true that having a second account on your phone is not without some trade-offs (although I have not experienced any issues personally). There are always edge cases that may not fit a given solution, but I don't want the 3CX community to read this thread and walk away with the impression that 3CX can't do a really great job with group voicemails, because 3CX does a great job with group voicemails.

So let's discuss the edge cases rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
 
Apart from your post calling everyone lazy, can you please post a few of the steps where you easily add a secondary voicemail extension to the phones without going through a bunch of hacking of phone templates that 3cx is clearly trying to get people to move away from doing? Every need I have for this involves atleast 15 phones across multiple departments and manually modifying a bunch of template files isn't an answer for these situations but I could be looking at it wrong as well?

I have no issue doing some work but it needs to be scalable, easy to reproduce across multiple phones and be able to show and train others how to use the feature.
 
Kevnich2,

I figured my "lazy" comment would stir the pot some. I admit to being pretty frustrated with some of the views being expressed and it came out a little harsh... perhaps. But for those who are unfamiliar with the steps needed to add a second account to a phone, take a look at the many 3CX blog examples of how to configure a phone manually. But rather than performing these steps on the first account within the phone, apply the steps on the second account within the phone. You really only need the IP of the PBX, the desired extension number (ID) and phone password (listed under the extension "Authentication" section in the 3CX console). Obviously your physical phone must support at least two accounts, but I don't think there is a supported phone sold today that doesn't support multiple accounts.

Effectively what you are doing is instructing your phone up to register to two extensions. The first extension (account) is auto-provisioned through the normal provisioning process. You don't need to change the standard provisioning process. The second virtual extension (account) is configured manually under the second account. The necessary configuration steps are performed using the web interface of the phone. Naturally the user interface is different from one phone manufacturer to another so I can't offer the precise steps, but it is easy. My expectation is that once you identify where to make the changes on the first phone's settings page, you should be able to setup the remaining phones in about 2-3 minutes each. Granted, if you have hundreds of phones to configure ... that's going to take some time. In the case of large numbers of phones needing to be configured, it may make sense to invest some time building a custom template.

Regarding custom templates, again just because custom templates are not "supported" that doesn't mean you shouldn't or can't do it. That said, you can't expect 3CX Support to go through all your customizations and look for errors. There simply are too many customers around the world to support that level of effort from 3CX support. However, unlike other "unsupported" things you shouldn't do with 3CX, custom templates are there specifically to allow you to make some changes when needed. Just remember to make a COPY of the original template, and apply your changes to the copy rather than the original template that came from 3CX.

There are lots of instructions on the proper way of managing custom templates on the 3CX site. Keep in mind that during the "development" stage of building your custom template, because you are working with a copy of the original template, you won't impact any of your other phones but the one you are using for test. If you screw up the template, you can always start over by making a second copy of the original. And if you temporarily screw up one phone, it's pretty dang easy to just reapply the default template and factory reset the phone. This is not a risky endeavor.

If you are experiencing unexpected behavior after applying your custom template, and 3CX wants you to revert to the default template, that's one setting and a reboot of the phone. Let 3CX support fix your issue, then put back the custom template. If the issue returns, it's a safe bet you didn't get your template quite right. It is true, however, that if you use a perfectly crafted template, you will still see the red flag on the 3CX Management Console, but you know why it is there and you can ignore it. I personally think it should be a warning at the most (rather than a red flag, but that's just my opinion).

Maybe this all sounds really messy, but in truth this is vary straightforward and should only take a couple of minutes to setup the first phone. Templates are only really worth the effort if you are dealing with a very large number of phones. This is basic 101 level stuff.
 
Not one for being 'lazy'...We have second (and in some cases third) virtual accounts on our Yealink T42S handsets.

Yes, it gives the ability to have notification of 'group / departmental' voicemails through message lights on the handsets, but what it doesn't give is the ability to work through the incoming voicemail in the order of oldest and most pressing first. It just gives you the newest voicemail first, which when implemented in a department that can receive a large number of callers leaving voicemail is not the ideal situation which results in the oldest voicemail being dealt with last.

I can't for the life of me understand why this much requested simple feature of being able to see call history and voicemail for a group (not a virtual extension) through either the webclient or software and not via a handset is proving so difficult for 3CX to provide.
 
...The other is being able to access shared parking from within the 3cx mobile app like you do from within the desktop client.

We've got around this by creating virtual extensions for shared park slots SP1 - SP5 and calling them 771 - 775.

(The easiest way to remember the code is to remember texting on an old phone and having to press the same key twice to reach the required letter? - Well, S and P are both on the 7 key, hence 77 and the number of the slot is 1 to 5).

Got the idea from here: https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/shared-parking-vs-park-orbit.48620/
 
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