Caller Features

Two types of callers interact with a voice mail system:

• A customer or vendor who calls your business. The person he or she wants to speak to is unavailable or is already busy on the phone, and the call forwards to voice mail. The caller hears the greeting of the person he or she called and then leaves a voice message for that person.
• An employee of your business who calls into the voice mail system to check or retrieve his or her messages.

All callers interact with the voice mail system by using the TUI only. The following features are available to the first type of caller (the person calling to leave a message) and are covered in this section:

• Outbound greeting bypass
• Message editing
• Urgent messages
• Mailbox-full indication
• Message leaving and mailbox login
• Zero-out destination or revert to AA

The second type of caller is a subscriber. Features available to this type of caller were covered in the section "Subscriber Features."

Outbound Greeting Bypass

If callers are not interested in listening to the outgoing greeting of the mailbox reached, they can bypass the greeting and proceed immediately to the beep, where they can leave a message. The caller can bypass the outgoing greeting of a voice mailbox by pressing # on the phone keypad at any time during the greeting playout.

Message Editing

After recording a message, a caller can listen to, edit, rerecord, or delete the message before sending. Or he or she can simply hang up, and the message is automatically sent.

Urgent Messages

If a caller hangs up after leaving a voice message for a subscriber, the message is sent with normal priority. If a caller presses the # key to end recording of a message, the Cisco UE voice mail system provides a menu where the caller can choose to tag the message as urgent (among other options, such as rerecording the message, deleting it, or listening to the message before sending).

Urgent messages are played at higher priority in the recipient's mailbox so that a subscriber hears urgent messages before normal messages when he or she logs into his or her mailbox.

Mailbox-Full Indication

If the recipient's mailbox is almost full (less than 5 seconds of available space), the caller is notified before recording a message and is not allowed to proceed. The caller hears "Sorry. The mailbox you're trying to reach is currently full. Please try again later." After this prompt, the caller is transferred to the voice mail operator (typically the AA) for further choices.

If the recipient's mailbox has available space, a new message from a caller is limited to the minimum of the following:

• The remaining space available in the mailbox
• The maximum caller message size parameter set for the mailbox

Message Leaving and Mailbox Login

Cisco UE has a single voice mail pilot number for both types of callers. If a call is redirected (by CFA, CFNA, or CFB), Cisco UE treats the call as if the person called to leave a message and plays the mailbox greeting. The appropriate mailbox is selected from the last redirected number in the call information delivered to Cisco UE. If the call was not redirected, Cisco UE treats the call as if a subscriber is calling in to retrieve messages. The mailbox is selected from the calling number information delivered to Cisco UE.

Zero-Out Destination or Revert to AA

When a caller leaves a message for a subscriber and does not hang up afterwards (you can press # and get a menu from the Cisco UE voice mail system to, for example, tag a message as urgent), a caller can press 0 and have the call transferred to a preconfigured destination. This is called the zero-out destination for the mailbox or the revert to AA feature.

By default, the zero-out destination for all mailboxes is the system voice mail operator number, discussed in the later section "Voice Mail Operator." The default for this operator number, in turn, is the Cisco UE AA pilot number. If a caller leaves a message for one subscriber in your business and wants to try to connect with another employee (who may be in the office), he or she can do so without redialing across the PSTN. For long-distance or international calls, this feature can be of significant benefit to avoid the inconvenience and expense of dialing into the called number multiple times.

If the AA is not the desired transfer destination, the zero-out number can be customized by the subscriber or administrator, per mailbox, as of Cisco UE release 1.1. The zero-out destination can be any destination that can be dialed within the Cisco CME system's dialplan, including PSTN locations.

Administrator Features