Manage message prompts from phone/client

[smartek]

Hello !

We would like to be able to activate a message "simply" from our phones (Yealink T46S) or the 3CX windows app or even the Webclient WITHOUT admin access. By "message", I am not talking about voicemails : i want the call to hang up after the message is heard.

For now, I am configuring this through IVR but you need an admin access for this. Is it not possible to manage this any other way ? I can configure a BLF key to change my status, and then link a voicemail to that status, but then the caller can leave a message. I would like to avoid this.

Thank you for your precious help !

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Hi,

You are almost there actually

1. On the extension that receives the call, set a forward on one of your statuses to go to that special IVR you made.
2. Create a BLF to change to that specific status i.e You can use the Lunch status or Business Trip
3. Create another BLF that returns you to "Available" so you can return to normal when you want to

When you change the status, the calls will divert to your message IVR that is designed to hang up after the call.

Tip: Did you know you can rename the 2 special statuses? Under Settings > General

 

[smartek]

Hi John,

Thank you for your response.

But if I understand correctly, your method still implies that the end user has to connect with admin rights to the 3CX console in order to record a new IVR message ??? So in other words, an end user has now way in managing this by himself only with his phone or softphone ?!?!

If I'm right, am I the only one that is very surprised about this ? I can already say that a lot of my end users will be very unhappy for this : I don't want to give them an admin access and they most certainly don't want to contact me everything they want to change a message, for example the Christmas Holidays, then New Year, etc...

Thank you for your help !

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Hi smartek,

You're welcome. So in 3CX the rights are mainly divided into two categories:

a) Things you can do on the extension level as a standard user
b) Things that are on a system level, that need administrator rights

Holidays, IVRs, special messages, call routing of ring groups, DIDs, queues and such are all on the admin level so it can't be done by anyone who is not an admin, and this is by design.

Originally you just said activate a message "simply" from our phones. I understood this as a static prerecorded message that is just sitting somewhere like an IVR and you just want to divert calls there with the press of a button. Now I suspect you wanted to do more than just that, so we are talking admin level tasks

Could you please describe what end goals you wish to achieve before we discuss the methods? There may be some ways around it to achieve what you want if the system allows it and we may be able to skip admin privileges for at least some of those tasks.

 

[smartek]

Hi John,

Thank you for taking the time to respond back.

A lot of our endusers are used to be able to manage holidays and IVRs by themself, and because some are maybe among the "older" generation, they would like be able to do everything from their phone : record a message and then activate the IVR. They are not yet super comfortable with the soft client (but it's changing), but they most certainly don't want to have access (and me either ^^) to the admin console to do so.

So for example, Christmas is coming. They would like to record a message and if someone calls them while they are not in the office (either by changing their status - what you suggest, or by managing out of office hours), the message will be played and the call will be ended. If they wanted voicemails, then I wouldn't be posting here as one can do everything from the soft client .

So for now, one has 1) to log in Console (with admin rights), 2) go to IVR, 3) record the message and overwrite the previous one (with the same name) so that the change of status on the phone would work ! So when they would record the message for New Years, they have two choices : either go in the extension and forward to external call to a new IVR (4) or overwrite the default IVR (4) (so they would loose the Christimas message for the following year per example).

This is really problematic and I really hope you can suggest me a workaround.

THank you again for your precious help !

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Ok so we are clearly in admin territory now and I'm not sure that can be avoided without someone like yourself (or a responsible delegated admin at the customer's site) intervening to assist. The problem here is that the customer needs to perform admin operations and they don't have a person that can qualify as an an admin from what you describe. That's not your fault of course, and understandably there are companies that aren't large enough to have an IT admin which can manage these things. So i would think they they either need to hire someone to do these things for them or you can create a solution for them as their PBX partner.

There may be a way to build something that achieves this, using the Call Flow Designer. I would suggest to start a new thread in the CFD forum and see if you can get some assistance there. It's a pretty powerful tool and there are ways to create an application that does exactly what you described above.

 

[smartek]

Don't you think it's strange that we have to give an admin access (they can see the call logs (!), access to advanced settings, ...), only to change the IVR message or the holidays ? I do not consider those as "admin operations".

One of the 2 following could be an "easy" workaround (anything planned for a futur update ?)

• Have a quick option (checkbox) to not allow the caller to leave a message after a voicemail (and then all can be set from the Windows App
• Have an intermediate level between user and admin (acces to console)

What about managing the IVR per extension from the webclient ?

CFD is for pro et entreprise version.