Shared access to voicemail with MWI

[stevelup]

Hi

We're migrating from a Mitel system where we make extensive use of shared voice mailboxes. For example we have Service, Sales, Accounts etc.

All the phones in Service have an MWI for the Service voicemail box, Sales, for sales and so on.

I feel like I'm missing something, but this does not appear to be possible with 3CX in that the only MWI you can have is for your own extension?

Cheers,

Steve

 

[Evolute IT]

No this isn't possible natively in 3CX.

@VoIPTools has something for this tho IIRC.

 

[stevelup]

Yes, I did look into that briefly, but it does not appeal unfortunately.

The intention was to use a 3CX Hosted solution, plus there's a significant cost attached to VoIPTools (more than the actual 3CX sub). I'm sure it's a great solution but we simply don't need any of the other functionality.

As you've confirmed I'm not missing anything, I'll just re-think how to do this. I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something obvious because this seems to be a fairly 'normal' thing to want to be able to do which our last two phone systems spanning 30 years (!) were capable of.

I'll probably just drag people into the 21st century and send the voicemails by e-mail!

 

[VoIPTools]

It seems to me that manually provisioning a second shared account on the phones would still be an option even with a hosted by 3CX solution. True, manually configuring accounts on your phones would not receive support from 3CX, but in this case I do not see that as a significant problem. The PBX would still be supported, you just could not ask for support to help you with provisioning these phones.

 

[stevelup]

Many thanks - I've decided to host this myself. It took ten minutes to set up and I was just being very lazy...

I hope you don't think I was being negative about your offering - it obviously adds loads of value and I can see how it would be very good value for a bigger business who could benefit more fully from what you're offering.

I'm going to give this a whirl:-

https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/general-mailbox.120644/#post-563317

 

[stevelup]

Hi

I can confirm I got this working using a custom template. Seems to behave as expected.

The only additional step I had to take was to add a forwarding exception rule to the voicemail user directing everything to voicemail as of course the minute any of these handsets registered, they would just ring instead of the caller going to VM.

The only little niggle is that the voicemail button on the Fanvil seems to always just call the voicemail number. It would be better if it brought up the menu that appears if you press 'OK' to acknowledge a VM or do 'Menu > Message > Voice Message > OK'

I can't see any way of changing that behaviour and it's not really a big issue.

Thanks,

Steve

 

[stevelup]

And I've solved that one little niggle now as well using one of the side keys. When set to Memory Key > Voicemail it works perfectly, even blinking when there's a message.

 

[SweetAction]

Many thanks - I've decided to host this myself. It took ten minutes to set up and I was just being very lazy...

I hope you don't think I was being negative about your offering - it obviously adds loads of value and I can see how it would be very good value for a bigger business who could benefit more fully from what you're offering.

I'm going to give this a whirl:-

https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/general-mailbox.120644/#post-563317

Glad to see my post was helpful, it was a very rough draft for Yealink phones, but Fanvil and Yealink from a template standpoint are similar.

 

[stevelup]

Yep, it set me down the right path, thanks! I've also re-sized the sidebar buttons.

Should have probably gone for the X5U instead!