anyone familiar with voicemail systems?

[Kaido]

I'm curious as to how they work. The company I work for has a bunch of lines coming in, connected to a computer-based voicemail system. I didn't know voicemail and everything was run by a real computer, I thought it was some specialized hardware or something. Anyone familiar with these systems and care to elaborate how they work? I'm googling but I'm not quite sure what to search for...

 

[Juice Box]

Basiclly a system (Audix is one) that keeps everyones messages. You dial an extension and them type in your phone number and password (you can call this extension from home too). Once you are "in" you can check messages,, record messages, change your away message and personal options. Its really a great system

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Juice Box
Basiclly a system (Audix is one) that keeps everyones messages. You dial an extension and them type in your phone number and password (you can call this extension from home too). Once you are "in" you can check messages,, record messages, change your away message and personal options. Its really a great system

Are they saved as .WAV files or something on the hard drive, in user folders?

 

[Juice Box]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: Juice Box
Basiclly a system (Audix is one) that keeps everyones messages. You dial an extension and them type in your phone number and password (you can call this extension from home too). Once you are "in" you can check messages,, record messages, change your away message and personal options. Its really a great system

Are they saved as .WAV files or something on the hard drive, in user folders?

ah...as far as that goes I have no idea....I would assume as some form of audio files.....

 

[zerocool1]

Originally posted by: Juice Box
Basiclly a system (Audix is one) that keeps everyones messages. You dial an extension and them type in your phone number and password (you can call this extension from home too). Once you are "in" you can check messages,, record messages, change your away message and personal options. Its really a great system

yea, that's what my university uses and the place where I've got my internship

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Juice Box

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: Juice Box
Basiclly a system (Audix is one) that keeps everyones messages. You dial an extension and them type in your phone number and password (you can call this extension from home too). Once you are "in" you can check messages,, record messages, change your away message and personal options. Its really a great system

Are they saved as .WAV files or something on the hard drive, in user folders?

ah...as far as that goes I have no idea....I would assume as some form of audio files.....

That's pretty cool. Someone from our ordering department was showing me the techie equipment and I saw the old computer in the phone closet. Huge mess of wires for the phone switchboard (or whatever it's called), then an ancient computer running a DOS-style program. Cool stuff, never really done phone equipment.

 

[Juice Box]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: Juice Box

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: Juice Box
Basiclly a system (Audix is one) that keeps everyones messages. You dial an extension and them type in your phone number and password (you can call this extension from home too). Once you are "in" you can check messages,, record messages, change your away message and personal options. Its really a great system

Are they saved as .WAV files or something on the hard drive, in user folders?

ah...as far as that goes I have no idea....I would assume as some form of audio files.....

That's pretty cool. Someone from our ordering department was showing me the techie equipment and I saw the old computer in the phone closet. Huge mess of wires for the phone switchboard (or whatever it's called), then an ancient computer running a DOS-style program. Cool stuff, never really done phone equipment.

yeah, id assume it doesnt have to be TOO technical...you just pre-program EVERY extension in before hand and when you get new hires you assign them an extension and they just call that number to set it up

 

[Toasthead]

we can actually save our viocemails as .wav files on our computers.

its pretty cool...'cept they are HUGE files.

 

[Kaido]

Is Audix something I can setup on a Linux box or something? Our receptionist is complaining about how old ours is. Ours doesn't offer things like departments, long menus, etc. - you have like a 10-second spot to record your voice, and that's it. No names/extensions or anything. So I'm looking for a possible upgrade for fun

 

[Juice Box]

Originally posted by: Kaido
Is Audix something I can setup on a Linux box or something? Our receptionist is complaining about how old ours is. Ours doesn't offer things like departments, long menus, etc. - you have like a 10-second spot to record your voice, and that's it. No names/extensions or anything. So I'm looking for a possible upgrade for fun

Youd have to look into it...I believe its spelled "Audix' but I could be wrong. I doubt its free but then again I have no idea

 

[Carazariah]

Originally posted by: Juice Box

Originally posted by: Kaido
Is Audix something I can setup on a Linux box or something? Our receptionist is complaining about how old ours is. Ours doesn't offer things like departments, long menus, etc. - you have like a 10-second spot to record your voice, and that's it. No names/extensions or anything. So I'm looking for a possible upgrade for fun

Youd have to look into it...I believe its spelled "Audix' but I could be wrong. I doubt its free but then again I have no idea

Okay,
I'm not our Avaya expert, but we use an Avaya Audix voicemail system for our call center. The file format that it uses is called a.law, though it supports multiple formats including u.law, a.law is the default it uses. . . Audix as I understand it was developed by Bell Labs or the Research division of AT&T then it was spun out as Lucent in the 90's and after consolication became Avaya) Audix as provided by Avaya isn't free, though I believe there are some Open Source voice mail systems out there.

Avaya's Audix actually runs on a Linux box in our server room.

http://www.dandans.com/MusicEditingMaster/formats.htm

C

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Carazariah

Originally posted by: Juice Box

Originally posted by: Kaido
Is Audix something I can setup on a Linux box or something? Our receptionist is complaining about how old ours is. Ours doesn't offer things like departments, long menus, etc. - you have like a 10-second spot to record your voice, and that's it. No names/extensions or anything. So I'm looking for a possible upgrade for fun

Youd have to look into it...I believe its spelled "Audix' but I could be wrong. I doubt its free but then again I have no idea

Okay,
I'm not our Avaya expert, but we use an Avaya Audix voicemail system for our call center. The file format that it uses is called a.law, though it supports multiple formats including u.law, a.law is the default it uses. . . Audix as I understand it was developed by Bell Labs or the Research division of AT&T then it was spun out as Lucent in the 90's and after consolication became Avaya) Audix as provided by Avaya isn't free, though I believe there are some Open Source voice mail systems out there.

Avaya's Audix actually runs on a Linux box in our server room.

http://www.dandans.com/MusicEditingMaster/formats.htm

C

I've been looking into Asterisk, which looks pretty neat. The solution doesn't have to be free, though. I doubt we'll get a phone system upgrade, but it's fun to dream

 

[jonnyGURU]

Avaya's Voicemail Lite is free and stores the files in WAV format. But it runs in Windows and I think it gets it's user/extension list from the switch via TFTP.. but I'm sure there's some way to hack it.

It comes bundled with the IP Office system. Most people opt for the "pro" version which allows you to map call flows, auto attendants, etc. But that costs a lot of money.

Asterisk is cool... but I didn't think they had a voice mail solution.

 

[thuper]

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU
Asterisk is cool... but I didn't think they had a voice mail solution.

WHAT!

Asterisk certainly takes voicemail. It can even email them to you.

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: thuper

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU
Asterisk is cool... but I didn't think they had a voice mail solution.

WHAT!

Asterisk certainly takes voicemail. It can even email them to you.

Indeed... I'm starting to believe that Asterisk is one of the better PBX's out there - especially since it includes voicemail. If new VOIP phones didn't cost so much (for good quality), I know of several offices that would love to ditch their Nortel Norstar system in favor of something easier to manage, and that has voicemail bundled with it (instead of an extra cost).

 

[DAM]

most of those box VM systems are usually running OS2 or a variant.


dam(wh)

 

Linux Voice Mail - looks neat to play around with.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Originally posted by: GeekDrew

Originally posted by: thuper

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU
Asterisk is cool... but I didn't think they had a voice mail solution.

WHAT!

Asterisk certainly takes voicemail. It can even email them to you.

Indeed... I'm starting to believe that Asterisk is one of the better PBX's out there - especially since it includes voicemail. If new VOIP phones didn't cost so much (for good quality), I know of several offices that would love to ditch their Nortel Norstar system in favor of something easier to manage, and that has voicemail bundled with it (instead of an extra cost).

Well... Anything is easier to manage than a Norstar, but you have to admit that Asterisk does have it's hardware limitations (for trunks, etc.) I may be wrong, but I can't see how you would implement Asterisk into an office with a fractional T, digital hand off and a dozen phones.

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU

Originally posted by: GeekDrew

Originally posted by: thuper

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU
Asterisk is cool... but I didn't think they had a voice mail solution.

WHAT!

Asterisk certainly takes voicemail. It can even email them to you.

Indeed... I'm starting to believe that Asterisk is one of the better PBX's out there - especially since it includes voicemail. If new VOIP phones didn't cost so much (for good quality), I know of several offices that would love to ditch their Nortel Norstar system in favor of something easier to manage, and that has voicemail bundled with it (instead of an extra cost).

Well... Anything is easier to manage than a Norstar, but you have to admit that Asterisk does have it's hardware limitations (for trunks, etc.) I may be wrong, but I can't see how you would implement Asterisk into an office with a fractional T, digital hand off and a dozen phones.

I personally haven't set up my own Asterisk box up yet, but I've been on the -user, -biz, and -doc mailing lists for Asterisk (hosted by Digium) for quite a while, and there are a LOT of people using it with many phones... multiple T1s, hundreds of phones, etc.

I'm actually quite confused as to what hardware limitations you're talking about. From what I've seen, there is hardware out there from various vendors that will work with Asterisk, and it will do just about anything you can throw at it.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Ok... I'm not saying I really know. That's why I qualified my post with "I may be wrong," but how do you hook up a digital hand-off to an Asterisk PC? I'm just not aware of any kind of PC card that can accept a direct connection with a SmartJack.

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU
Ok... I'm not saying I really know. That's why I qualified my post with "I may be wrong," but how do you hook up a digital hand-off to an Asterisk PC? I'm just not aware of any kind of PC card that can accept a direct connection with a SmartJack.

I'm not really saying I know either... which is why I qualified my post with "haven't set up my own Asterisk box up yet".

I would have sworn I read a discussion about that, though. Hrmmm... now I'm interested in finding out. I suppose I could look it up.

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU
Ok... I'm not saying I really know. That's why I qualified my post with "I may be wrong," but how do you hook up a digital hand-off to an Asterisk PC? I'm just not aware of any kind of PC card that can accept a direct connection with a SmartJack.

I could have really misunderstood some folks when they were talking about smartjacks and Asterisk, but wouldn't the products here take care of that?

 

[jonnyGURU]

Originally posted by: GeekDrew

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU
Ok... I'm not saying I really know. That's why I qualified my post with "I may be wrong," but how do you hook up a digital hand-off to an Asterisk PC? I'm just not aware of any kind of PC card that can accept a direct connection with a SmartJack.

I could have really misunderstood some folks when they were talking about smartjacks and Asterisk, but wouldn't the products here take care of that?

Yep. That Wildcard card (card card?) is exactly what I was talking about. All I had seen before was people taking multi-port modem cards and using those for incoming POT's. Real business don't use analog, so using a modem or any kind of FXS/FXO card is not a realistic solution. :thumbsup: