auto attendant/voicemail

Consider and ESI C or S class. Fairly inexpensive and, from my experience, very reliable.

Take care, Rich

God bless the USA

For the sake of an argument, you're trying to do a $1000 job with a $200 box. What is your budget?

For the $1K, you can get a Venture IP system, or a Panasonic TA-824 with BV and Auto Attendant.

Both of these systems are pretty simple to install and configure and don't have a ton of bells and whistles.

Clearly, the more money you spend, the more features you'll gain. Keep that in mind if you plan to expand either employees or phone system functions.

Carl Navarro

Thank you for the suggesti> > For the sake of an argument, you're trying to do a $1000 job with a

Obviously I am not looking to spend a 1k or else I would not have asked about vp206. I appreciate the suggestion but thats not in my budget. Maybe someone can answer if the vp206 does what I asked about?

Open source is your friend. Asterisk!

I'll second this suggestion. If you've got a spare box around you can try it out for just the cost of a card for interfacing to your PSTN.

The downside is there could be a bit of a learning curve.

What do you think of callbutler? I have been looking into this. The only downside is 100% voip.

Thanks,

Jonathan

Well, you seem to have a handle on it all by yourself. I sold my VP to David Lesher who hangs out here. Maybe he'll jump in and give his unbiased opinion on what a piece of crap the system was. I bought it about 3 or 4 years ago to answer the phone of a large retail store, and play a "we are opening in the future call our other stores until then" message and then allow the caller to press zero to reach someone in this store.

It required a Standby Power Supply because the internal battery, even after it was replaced, kept dropping out and losing the programming. The version of software was barely upgradeable and it would not detect fax tones. Id dit light Vodavi message waiting lights on the single line sets, and it did allow you to leave a message if the single line ports were unanswered. Yes, the phones had to be connected to the ports on the system, it's a PBX.

Carl

As Carl said; I bought {or my client did..} a VP206. It now has the Stak improved ROMs.

It's working, but it's no Jack Kennedy.

a) The station ports are not balanced. What that means is -- don't put the unit 170 ft away in the phone room or you'll get lots of crosstalk between stations. I moved it into the office itself & that problem is gone. Yes, the phones plug into the unit; it plugs into the wall & the incoming lines.

b) There's some griping that you can't play back VM messages in LIFO order, just FIFO. My response is such discourages VM message hoarding. There IS a "skip-ahead" function while playing messages.

c) VM audio quality is OK - not broadcast perfect but not robot-ish.

d) Finding phones with 90V message-waiting lights that the customer liked was a minor PITA. We settled on a Panasonic model.

e) Our fax detection did not work at all, but Stak told me our box was the oldest hardware version. Instead, I used ""Ringmaster"" aka another DN from Verizontal; the fax machine had a detector. I set that trunk to need 5-6 rings before the VP206 picks up; that gives the fax enough time to snatch the call.

f) Yes, each station has its own OGM, so people call in & hear the main greeting:

You've reached XYZ, for Abbot, dial 12 for Costello, 14

and if he does not pick up:

Hi, this is Abbot, and I'm not here....

g) I assume the transfer function works, because I'd hear about it otherwise..

h) I've had some complaints that the Message Waiting lamp does not come on until hours after the message was left.

i) There have been some griping from callers that the VM cut them off, and sometimes it's done that more than once.

h) & i) may cause us to replace it in the mid-term future.

A Lucent Partner system could be setup to do just that. An ACS 308 (3 lines - 8 extensions) processor (all in one unit - except for voicemail) could do just that if don't mind investing in a pcmcia voicemail card for it. The latest versions of the processor have more lines and more extensions in the unit.

[Default] "lyle" said on that big USENET thingie:

Sounds like the TMC EV4500 phone system would be a perfect solution. We have the user manual available for free download at

so you can check it out completely in advance.

Steve

theauto-attendantthe others to the regular answering machine so when theauto attendantphone transfers it to other phones-each phone's

I would check out

Very easy and very inexpensive and does most everything you're looking for.