I read through many posts on the internet but nobody seems to use IVR as a simple answering machine recording calls.
What I want is a simple answering machine everyone knows from their home phones, means if call is not answered after a certain time (or a certain amount of rings), play message saying that nobody is at home and then record callers message. I don’t need any DTMF menu or something, just record and some kind of notification (maybe e-mail or message when picking up extension).
The best notification would be if the phone connected to the extension (with a FXS->VOIP Adapter) which periodically checks for answering messages (don’t know how this works) would show that there are answering machine messages, because this stopped working with asterisk. When the phone was connected directly to PSTN not PSTN->ASTERISK->FXS->Phone this worked fine.
Would be great to have this functionality back with asterisk and its ivr…
Any help at least on the answering machine part (without this special notification) would be great.
In a residential setting, you likely have a ring group set up to ring all the extension’s in the house when an incoming call comes through. You should be able to set that ring group to go to an voicemail extension if there is no answer.
Set the voicemail up normally and record a “not available” and “busy” message. You can also set the system to email you when a VM is left.
Setting it up this way does not require the use of an IVR. However, using an IVR can be helpful if you want to have different mailbox options. For example, when a caller does not get an answer at my house, they get sent to an IVR. In that IVR, the recording tells them to press 1 to leave a message for my wife, or press 2 to leave a message for me. In the IVR, I have set it up so that a “1” press will send the caller to my wife’s voicemail extension while a “2” press will send them to my voice mail extension. That way I don’t have to listen to messages left for my wife and vice versa.
It should be noted that some phones have a message lamp that can be set up to flash when a voicemail is left on a specific extension (vm ext). However that is done through the phone provisioning and not as part of the VM or IVR set up.