IVR - go back to IVR after leaving voicemail?

I have an IVR setup that allows dialing of extensions, and is working fine.

When I dial in, I hear the IVR message and I can dial an extension. If that person is unavailable, I can leave a voicemail.

What I would like to to is have the option to go back to the IVR after leaving the voicemail, (or choose not to leave a voicemail) and dial another extension, (or get the operator by dialing 0)

The scenario is, someone dials in, gets the IVR and dials my extension. I am unavailable, so they want to talk to someone else, and should be able to dial a different extension.

Without this functionality, they would have to hangup and call back again to dial the other extension number.

I have managed to set it so that if I dial 0 during voicemail recording, it will dial that IVR entry, which in my case is the default/timeout ring group.

I thought this might work if I dialled another extension, but it doesn’t seem to recognise it.

Any ideas ?

Thanks,
Declan

You don’t say anything about your deployment, but in your IVR did you set

“Return to IVR after VM” to yes?

Yes, it is set to return to IVR after VM.

Maybe I am not waiting long enough after leaving a voicemail message for it to go back to the IVR.

Since dialling 0 was working during VM recording to choose that IVR option, i did try setting up the extension numbers as options in the IVR, but that didnt seem to work either.

i.e. I set IVR Option 10 to dial extension 10, 11 to dial ext 11, etc etc, and disabled the direct dialing extensions option, but same result. - If i dial another extension number during VM recording it doesnt recognise it.

Any other ideas ?

And the individual IVR options also have “return” checked?

Pressing # after leaving the msg does not bring you back?