Changing Auto Attendant Greetings in Voicemail Pro – Advanced Way

In a previous post, we talked about a quick easy way to modify greetings in VM Pro.

I prefer making modules that can be added, and there isn’t a lot of tweaks to make them work.  In the next, more advanced way, we can have that.

I would like to thank the late Kyle Holladay Sr. who originally shared this with me.  His modules and overall knowledge of Voicemail Pro is second to none.  Kyle passed away in 2013, and will be greatly missed.

So, that’s what we are going to build!

Step 1.  Create a new Module and short code.  We will use “menuRecordings” for the module name.  For the short code, see the picture below.

Step 2.  We need to create a menu, to ask which greeting needs to be modified, a base greeting, or a queued greeting.  So add a menu action, label it “menuRecordings”, and give it 3 options.  1 for base greeting, 2 for queued greeting, and 3, that could send the caller back to the Auto Attendant.  This way, if you change a greeting remotely, and want to get back to someone internal, you can…..   In the  entry prompt area, make the filename, “base500.wav”.  You could record that greeting now.

Step 3.  Lets work on option 1 for now.  Option 1 will change a base greeting.  This will be our normal, attendant or sub menu greetings.  We will need to start a chart, of what our greeting numbers are going to be.  See the picture below:

So, you get it.  Our greetings will just be numbers now….So, after the person presses 1 from the main menu action, we need to create a new menu action, and call it “Recording Number”.  This is where we will ask, which greeting do you wish to record (base530.wav).   The only touch tone we need for this entry is a “$”, meaning, all digits pressed.  We don’t need a timeout or anything else.

Step 4.  Now we need to add an “Edit Play List” action.  Label the action “baseKEY wav” in the wavs directory.

Step 6.  Lets connect all of our connectors.  Connect 1 to “Recording Number”.  Connect “Recording Number” to Record basekey wav”, and finally, “base Keywav” back to the first Menu action, or use the “Home” action.  Also, if we have not recorded our greetings yet, we should now.  Record the greetings for both the main Menu action as well as the “Recording Number”.  Make sure that when you record the files, they are named appropriately, “base500.wav” for the main menu action, and “base530.wav” for the “Recording Number” action.

Step 7.  Now lets go and set up for the queued greetings.  Create another menu action and name it “menuGetQueueNumber”.  Again, just create a touch tone of ”$”.  This is where we would ask the user for the Extension number of the group queued greeting that they wish to record.  You can record the greeting and give the recording a number (base545.wav for example)

Step 8.  Now we need to use a generic action to save what the user would have typed in, at the previous menu.  In the specific tab of the generic action, set it to “Select Generic Command”, “Set CPxx Value”, data variable should be set to 0 (zero) and the “with value” field is set to “$KEY”.  What all this means is that we are going to save the digits entered ($KEY) in the previous menu, as variable “CP0”.

Step 8.  We need to create a new menu action with 3 options.  In this menu we will be asking the user, which queued greeting they wish to modify, 1 for the “Queued” greeting, and 2 for the “Still Queued” greeting.  So, option 1, 2 and “#” should be added.  “#” cab be connected back to the “menuGetQueueNumber”, we have it going back to the beginning of the call flow.  In the greeting, if the user wishes to re-enter the group number to be modified, they can press “#”.

Step 9.  Now we need to add an “Edit Play List” action.  Label the action “queueCP0pmptKEY wav”.  In the specific tab, we want to create the filename: “queue$CP0pmpt$KEY.wav”  Make sure that the filename is created in the Wavs directory.

Lets explain what we are doing here.  When asked for the queue number we wish to modify, we saved that as “CP0”.  Then we asked if they wanted to modify the queued greeting or the still queued greeting, because the next action is where we are saving that digit press, we can use “$KEY” in the next action.  So, when we label the file, “queue$CP0pmpt$KEY.wav”, if the caller entered to modify group 200 and the still queued greeting, it would look like: “queue200pmpt2.wav”.  So all you need to do is go to the hunt group 200 start point and set the file-name as such.

Step 10.  Make sure that we have all of our actions connected.  The last “queueCP0pmptKEY wav” action, should be connected to the beginning of the module, or to the “menuGetQueueNumber”, whichever you want.  Per the wav listing above of the base files, record the greetings.  IN the action “menuGetQueueNumber”, set up filename “base535.wav”.  For the menu action “menuGetQueuePrompt”, set up filename “base540.wav”

We should be done.  On a phone we can press *90, and hear he greeting (base500) asking if we want to change a base greeting or a queued greeting.