by Walt Medak

Q:  The following question came from our good friends at Western University in Pomona, CA.

Our IT Director asked us if we could preempt the voicemail greeting with a broadcast message in the event of an emergency. In other words, play a message/announcement before the call plays the default name or greeting on all voice mailboxes.  Rich thought we could do that by adding an announcement in hunt group 10 (voicemail). I tried that in the hunt group pages but it doesn’t seem to work.

A:  I did a little testing here, and I agree that the “First Announcement Extension:” option in the voicemail hunt group won’t accomplish what you want to do.  It will play before going to voicemail if you call the hunt group directly, but not when a call is sent there via a coverage path.  One option I came up with would be to change the coverage paths used for voicemail.  Instead of using the hunt group, h10 in your case, as the coverage point, set up a new VDN and vector.  The vector would be very simple.  The first line would play the announcement you want callers to hear before going to someone’s voicemail greeting.  The second line would be “messaging skill 10 for extension active.”  When not needing an announcement to play you can just take out the first line of the vector.

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