[asterisk-users] Newbie questions about Voice mail

Wed Nov 8 02:42:41 MST 2006

Brian,

I should concur with all that Dean raised.
Given the experience level you describe and the clear business case for what 
you want to do, had you considered a commerical solution ?

It would give you the peace of mind that all will work. It will also allow 
you to do many of the smaller features such as Outlook Integration in a 
click and drop manner as well as the group issues, setting up of voicemail 
delivery to email etc.

See some other comments below.

Steve
(of course would be more than happy to promote our own but there are others 
you could do well to look at)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <bdk at unb.ca>
To: "Dean Collins" <Dean at cognation.net>
Cc: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" 
<asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2006 9:01 PM
Subject: RE: [asterisk-users] Newbie questions about Voice mail

> Dean
>
> Thanks for responding. I have added more info in your reply. Right now we 
> do not operate our own PBX or voice mail system. All of the service is 
> provided by the telco. As a start I was wondering if I could simply put in 
> asterisk to do just voicemail. I am assuming the telco can configure all 
> the phone to automatically call forward to "asterisk" on no answer. If 
> asterisk can handle this I am assuming that a user would just call some 
> number to retiev voice mail. They would lose the call waiting light on 
> their phone so the email notification of a voice mail would be necessary.
>
>
> ......Brian
>
>
> On Sun, 5 Nov 2006, Dean Collins wrote:
>
>> Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2006 00:04:36 -0500
>> From: Dean Collins <Dean at cognation.net>
>> To: bdk at unb.ca,
>>     Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
>>     <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
>> Subject: RE: [asterisk-users] Newbie questions about Voice mail
>>
>> Hi Brian,
>> I'm sure some other people will give you better answers but quick
>> answers are;
>>
>> 1/ Depends on volume of message leaving/collection, is it in a single
>> location? Multiple locations with multiple time zones?
>
> Two locations, one time zone. Could be two different systems since they 
> are in two different cites connected by a 1G connection.
>
>
>>
>> Estimate the number of voicemails left per hour and reply with this.
>>
>>
> There are about 3000 phones. Some are busier than others os lets say 2 
> messages per phone per day. An they are mostly in the peak work day so 
> lets say 500 per hour and the average length is 30 seconds.

This is less than 5 concurrent messages :)
I think you will need to have at least a T1 system because you are going to 
face some fairly extreme variations in usage.

>> 2/ retrieve either via deliver to email or dial in to a number to
>> collect voicemail via phone (or collect and play via a website)
>>
> What does the conversion and how does one handle bulk updates? to users?
> How much control does the user have?

How is a user informed that voicemail are waiting for them ?
What is you existing PBX, how would the Asterisk based system interface with 
it ? does it use SIP ? or T1 interface ?

>> How are the retrieving their voicemail now? Do you want to replicate
>> this for ease of replacement as near as possible?
>
> Right now we are using the voice mail service provided by the teclo and 
> are spending $0.06 per minute. The user connects to the voice mail by 
> dialing  *99 and entering a password on their office set or remoetely by 
> dialing 123-MAIL on any phone (123 is the three digit prefix of their 
> phone number) and then entering their password. They do not have any voice 
> to email service today. If possible I would like to ease the transition if 
> it can be done. Lots of stepswill follow discovery if it can be done. >

>> 3/ Not sure what you mean by tie in?
>>
> How do you match a voice mail box to an email address?
> Can there be multiple email addresses for one voice mail box?

You can program the Asterisk but with a good interface, click and drop.

>
>> 4/ Sure, how do you have this configured at the moment? Why not
>> replicate voicemail group delivery in the same format?
>
> Talkmail is a service provided by the telco where you group a bunch of 
> numbers together so you can send the same message to all of them at the 
> same time.

Again it can be programmed but click and drop may be easier.

>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Dean
>>
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-
>>> bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of bdk at unb.ca
>>> Sent: Saturday, 4 November 2006 11:54 PM
>>> To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
>>> Subject: [asterisk-users] Newbie questions about Voice mail
>>>
>>>
>>> I am totally ignorant about actually using asterisk for any purpose. I
>>> have read some of the docs but not all. I am currently doing a
>> telephone
>>> audit for my company and one of the issues is voice mail. We are
>> spending
>>> quit a bit of money with our telco for voice mail services and I was
>>> wondering about using asterisk as just a voice mail system. We are not
>>> quite ready to move to a full VOIP system yet but if I can get this
>> system
>>> in place the VOIP will follow.
>>>
>>> Could I get all 3000 phones (on 2 sites) or a large subset set to have
>> a
>>> call forward no-answer feature set to call a number that would be
>> answered
>>> by asterisk's voice mail.
>>>
>>> If so:
>>>     1. what hardware do I need to handle 3000 phones?
>>>
>>>     2. how would users retrieve their voice mail?
>>>
>>>     3. how does one tie voice mail into an e-mail address? Are their
>> ways
>>>        to do bulk updates for several thousand new users every year?
>>>
>>>     4. is there a feature what we call talk mail where you set up a
>> group
>>>        of phone numbers and send the same message to all of them?
>>>
>>>
>>> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>>
>>> .....TIA
>>> ........Brian Kaye
>>> ...........UNB
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