I would like to have an extension with voicemail, but the voicemail should be accessible only as a destination (I would like to be able to reach it as an IVR option) or by direct dial. I don’t want it to be reached when the extension is busy or is unavailable.
I tried to use VMX Locater, bu it seems that disabling busy and/or unavailable personal voicemail handling simply directs me to normal voicemail instead of shutting down the call, which is not what I need.
Can this be done without too much custom rules writing? In the case the answer is no, would a patch that implements this be appreciated and included in some release?
It sounds like two different extensions would do the trick. Perhaps your main extensions is 201, but you don’t want it to go to voicemail. That means you would set voicemail Status to Disabled on the Extensions page for 201. Calls would ring or get busy signal, but never go to voicemail.
Then setup another extension just for voicemail, perhaps 301. Without a phone attached to 301, calls to 301 will always go directly to voicemail. You can use 301 as the target for direct dialing or IVR calls. Of course, you won’t get any voicemail lights showing up on 201. If you ever need to temporarily enable voicemail on 201, just forward 201 to 301.
I’m currently using the solution you propose, and it works. But I would still prefer not to have two extensions for the following reason:
If the voicemail is associated with the main extension, the user can directly dial his voicemail with *98 and access the messages, as others do.
If someone dials 301 (the voicemail dedicated extension, in your example) he would find that unavailable, being redirected to the voicemail. Ok, I could not giv 301 out to the public.