Typical Small business usage

[andrewgroup]

Many small businesses wish to take advantage of Automated attendants want the following features, all of which consume accounts..

1. A daily Greeting (This can be scheduled based upon a known Holiday Schedule using a scheduled Service Flag

2. A lunch Hour Greeting (This Can be scheduled based uipon a known Holiday Schedule)

3. An AfterHours Greeting (This Can be Scheduled based upon a known Holiday Schedule)

Of course the client also wishes to be able to turn a greeting on at any time for whatever reason, (Late or Long Lunch)

or turn on the Offices are closed due to weather.

 

I'd like to hear how others have addressed these issues to enable the client to control these and eliminate busy work to make the client happy on these issues?

What about remotely accessing and enabling these toggle?

[Vodia PBX]

The key to get this working is to use multiple service flags. I would set up a "root" auto attendant that takes care about normal business. Then several service flags can take care about the "exceptions" and route calls in these cases to other auto attendants.

 

This works nice for periodic schedules (e.g. setting office hours) and it also works nice if the flags are always turned on and off manually.

 

Changing a periodic flag dynamically... hmm worth a try. Maybe it is enough to just call the service flag and change it's state. But I remember there was a lot of trouble when the user and the PBX both try to change the state. If possible it is better to make a clear decision.

[andrewgroup]

Changing a periodic flag dynamically... hmm worth a try. Maybe it is enough to just call the service flag and change it's state. But I remember there was a lot of trouble when the user and the PBX both try to change the state. If possible it is better to make a clear decision.

 

 

So do we assume the last service flag to trigger is the active service flag?

 

Will a service flag triggering either scheduled or manually, will it reset all other service flags?

 

you said you remember "Lot's of Problems" how far back are you remembering and were these issues addressed in later versions.

 

We are in the process of trying to standardize our clients with a standard set of greetings and processes with a 1 page usage manual.

[Vodia PBX]

So do we assume the last service flag to trigger is the active service flag?

 

Well, the PBX processes the flags from from to end. The first that "fires" is being processed. I am nore sure if it should be the first or the last, maybe it even depends on what you want to achieve.

 

Will a service flag triggering either scheduled or manually, will it reset all other service flags?

 

No, the service flags don't know about each other and work independently.

 

you said you remember "Lot's of Problems" how far back are you remembering and were these issues addressed in later versions.

 

Well, if you automatically change a flag by the PBX and then let the user change it manually, there is always the problem of secretaries leaving late and comnig early and then the PBX overwrites their manual state in a way that they did not envision.

[andrewgroup]

there is always the problem of secretaries leaving late and comnig early and then the PBX overwrites their manual state in a way that they did not envision.

 

I was reading a wiki entry and http://wiki.pbxnsip.com/index.php/Agent_Group. and it talks about having multiple service flags listed. Does the concept of having multiple service flags listed in the night service option for AA's apply. One of the service flags could be a scheduled flag and the other a manual flag. Is this right? Seems so simply if so.