Call Handling
A call handling plan is a powerful tool that determines how calls are processed during a certain time window (based on day of week and time of day). It is the called party's mailbox that determines which call handling plan is active for a given call. Multiple call handling plans may be assigned to a mailbox, but only one of them may be considered active at any given time. If two or more call handling plans have overlapping time windows, the one listed first on the mailbox's call handling tab is the one that will be active.
When there is no active call handling plan (either none assigned to the mailbox or none that are active for the current time), the system will take default actions instead (what action depends on whether transfers are allowed for the given mailbox as well as the current state of the call).
Changing the settings for the Auto Attendant call handling template, assigned to auto attendant mailboxes by default (such as 991), can disable the auto attendant function and/or put the voice mail ports into an infinite loop. For most applications, the default settings for this template should not be modified.
Whether you opt to edit an existing call handling plan or create a new one, the system will open a dialog for editing similar to that shown below. Other than the title bar, the dialog for creating a new call handling plan and for editing an existing plan are virtually identical.
To save your changes, click OK. If you are creating a new template, the system will prompt you to enter a filename before saving the file; if you are editing an existing template, it will just overwrite the existing file.
To close the dialog without saving any changes, click Cancel.
If you want to create a new template based on an existing one, use the Copy option, then edit the copy.
The above figure shows the dialog for editing a call handling plan, with the Standard call handling plan loaded.
Call Handling Properties
This section includes the schedule settings that determine when the template is active as well as the settings that determine what to do at the start of the call (when someone is attempting to transfer to a mailbox using this template).
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Starting At | Time of day when the template becomes active, for any day on which it is allowed to be active. |
| Ending At | Time of day when the template becomes inactive, for any day on which it is allowed to be active. |
| Days | The days of week for which the Starting At and Ending At times are valid; the template will be inactive for the entirety of any day not selected. |
| Routing Address | The mailbox address used by the Routing Technique when routing the call. If any address other than Office Extension is chosen you will need to create that address in any mailbox that will use the template. Otherwise, you may experience serious problems when attempting to transfer to the mailbox. |
| Routing Technique | The manner in which the call is routed on the initial transfer attempt. This will almost always be extension transfer (paired with Office Extension as the routing address). If the mailbox has Do Not Disturb enabled, then the call will be routed to the mailbox greeting rather than attempting a transfer. |
| Routing Method | This will always be Standard Method and should not be changed. |
| Routing Chain/Complete | The action to take after the greeting has been played and (if appropriate) a message has been recorded. If you select Execute Mailbox, another selection box will appear to the right; select the mailbox to execute from that list. |
Routing Complete Actions
The following actions are provided for use by the Routing Chain/Complete setting:
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Disconnect | Hangs up the call immediately. |
| Execute mailbox | Leaves the current mailbox and executes the active call handling plan for the specified mailbox. |
| Launch IVR application | Reserved for future use. |
| Return to attendant | Returns the call to the current location's auto attendant mailbox. |
| Transfer to operator | Transfers the call to the extension of the current location's operator mailbox. |
Optional Completion Properties
This section includes the settings that determine the action to take if the call returns to voice mail because the transfer attempt was not successful. Each of the following settings uses a selection box to choose from a predefined list of options. If the option selected requires a secondary setting, another selection box will appear to the right. For example, if Execute Mailbox is selected, a secondary selection box will appear to the right from which you can choose the mailbox number to execute.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Ring No Answer | The action to take when a call to the extension is not answered. |
| Busy | The action to take when the extension is busy. |
| No Plan Active | Not used; deprecated. If no plan is active, the system will take default actions based on the call status: On RNA, it will perform the Ring no answer processing. On busy, it will perform Busy/Queuing processing. On failure due to network problems, it will perform Return to attendant. |
| Telephone Network Problems | The action to take if errors on the telephone network occur (e.g., no dial tone or no ring back). |
Optional Completion Actions
The following actions are provided for use by the settings found under Optional Completion Properties:
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Busy/Queuing processing | Plays the busy greeting and, if the COS allows, offers the option to join a call queue for this extension. Otherwise, it will take a message, if appropriate, after playing the greeting. This option is only available for the Busy setting. |
| Disconnect | Hangs up the call immediately. |
| Execute mailbox | Leaves the current mailbox and executes the call handling plan for the specified mailbox. |
| Immediate record | Begins recording a message immediately, without playing any greeting or prompts. Whether a beep is played first or not depends on the configuration of the assigned COS. |
| Launch IVR application | Reserved for future use. |
| Play blocking greeting and go to voice mail | Plays the selected mailbox greeting and invokes the assigned SDA menu, recording a message if appropriate. |
| Return to attendant | Returns the call to the current tenant's auto attendant mailbox. |
| Ring no answer processing | Plays the RNA greeting and invokes the assigned SDA menu, recording a message if appropriate. This option is not available for the Busy setting. |
| Transfer to operator | Transfers the call to the extension of the current tenant's operator mailbox. |
How It Works
The call handling plan is used to alter how a call is processed by the system in one of two places: either at the start of the call (when the extension is first dialed) or at the end of a call (after it has been answered or not answered). One further consideration is the schedule that specifies the time period and days of the week during which the template is considered active (collectively known as the time window).
Time Window
The time window determines when the template is active and when it is not. For any time that falls outside of the time window, the template is inactive and has no effect on the call whatsoever. The only caveat to the time window is the Template Disabled check box on the Call Handling Plans property page; if the template is marked as disabled, then it is considered inactive at all times on all days regardless of the time window settings for the template itself.
The time window for a call handling plan follows these three rules:
- For any day of the week that is not selected, the template will not be active for that entire 24-hour period.
- For any day of the week that is selected, the template will be active from the starting time until the ending time (inclusive), and otherwise inactive, except in the case where both times are set to 12:00 a.m.
- If the starting and ending times are both 12:00 a.m., then for any day of the week that is selected the template is active for the entire day.
If you assign more than one template to a mailbox and they have overlapping time windows (such that both would be considered active during a given time period), the one listed first will be the one that is used. In searching for an active handling plan, the system moves from the top down, stopping at the first template that is considered active.
Start of Call
In this context, start of call is defined as either when a caller dials the extension from within the system (e.g., at the main greeting auto attendant or during some other mailbox's greeting) or when the caller selects an SDA action that has been defined to transfer to an extension. In either case, the first thing the system does is check for an active call handling plan.
- If there is no active call handling plan, it will perform the default action: transfer to the mailbox extension.
- If there is an active plan, it will run the technique specified by the template. If the technique is extension transfer, it will transfer to the Route To address specified by the template. For the Standard call handling plan, this is the Office Extension address, which is the extension number defined on the Owner Settings property page. Other call handling techniques may perform some action other than transferring and may not even use the Route To address at all.
End of Call
In this context, end of call means either that the transfer was completed successfully or the call has bounced back to the voice mail system (VMS) because either it was not able to complete the transfer or the call went unanswered or the line was busy (or DND). Note that on integrated systems using blind transfers, a call bounced back on busy or ring no answer may come into the system as a 'new' call on a different voice port; nevertheless, it is still treated as the 'end of call' in this context (as long as the call is integrated in a way that identifies it as having been forwarded on busy or RNA).
The first thing the VMS does in this case is to check for an active call handling plan. If there is no active plan, then default actions are used instead.
- For ring no answer, the default action is Ring no answer processing (play the ring no answer greeting and follow the SDA).
- For busy, the default action is Busy/Queuing processing (play the busy greeting and follow the SDA or allow caller to join the call queue).
- In all other cases, the default action is Play blocking greeting and goto voice mail (play the call blocking greeting and follow the SDA).
For standard mailboxes, absent the caller selecting an SDA action, the VMS will default to taking a message after the appropriate greeting is played, unless the assigned COS does not allow messages to be taken (in which case it will typically return to the main greeting auto attendant).
If a call handling plan is active, then the actions taken will depend on how the settings listed in the Optional Completion Events section are configured. They may or may not be the same as the default actions listed above.
Why Use It
As discussed in the How It Works section above, the DV2000 will automatically take certain call handling actions by default if no plan is assigned to the mailbox or if the assigned plan is not active. So why would you create and assign a different call handling plan template? To change how the calls are processed.
For example, you may not want to enable call queuing, as it can quickly tie up a lot of voice lines, preventing callers from being able to leave messages and subscribers from being able to retrieve messages. This can easily be a problem on small systems. So you may want to make sure that your mailboxes are using a call handling plan template that has the Busy condition assigned the action Play blocking greeting and goto voice mail rather than the Busy/Queuing processing action. And, in fact, this is exactly how the Standard call handling plan template—-the one used by standard mailboxes by default–—is configured.