Announcement with extension dial

I am trying to set up a simple introductory announcement (“if you know your party extension, you can dial it now; otherwise stay on the line”).

Should I set it up with IVR? IVR requires me to specify something in “IVR Entries” table. For now I specified 0 and send it to voicemail. But I don’t expect any IVR entries.

Is there a simpler way to do this? “Announcement” would be nice, but there it seems to ignore DTMF while it is playing.

Or, is there something else that I may be missing?

Thanks

You have to setup and IVR and enable extension dialing. I would make the users record their names and give a directory option. You can make custom directories to leave folks out that don’t want/need to be looked up.

Sorry, Scott - rereading my post I realize i wasn’t clear. I did enable extenstion dialing. It’s the need to put a bogus value in “IVR Entries” table what bothering me. I hoped there would be a better way. Something like “Announcement” with ability to do extension dialing and a fallthrough destination in case nothing was dialed.
I remember that Asterisk book authors distinguish between “Auto attendant” and IVR. That was another reason that IVR seemed to be an overkill for something so trivial. I thought (hoped) that I just missed something simpler. But if that is the best option - so be it!
Thanks again

The only ivr entry you would insert is the “t” or timeout entry which would force the call to a specific destination if nothing were entered. The “i” destination might be appropriate too.

w5waf,
I have no doubt that you are familiar with the screen in question; I am inserting the screenshot only to make sure that we are talking about the same thing.
IVR setup
As you know t and i options are addresed by “IVR Options (DTMF)” section. However, the system won’t let me save, unless I add at least one entry in the “IVR Entries” section at the bottom.
Given that, do you mind rewording your reply. I don’t understand what you meant. Sorry for being obtuse.

It should let you save with only the invalid destination and the timeout destination set.

I know…i just tried it.

dpilon,
you are right - it did! I could swear - it gave me an error before. Sorry!

The error was probably due to a small bug that happened a few days ago with one of the updates.

Which did not save the invalid or timeout entry. It has been fixed.