Call routing

A call routing plan is a powerful tool that determines how calls are processed during a certain time window (based on day of week and time of day). It is the called party's mailbox that determines which call routing plan is active for a given call. Multiple call routing plans may be assigned to a mailbox, but only one of them may be considered active at any given time. If two or more call routing plans have overlapping time windows, the one listed first on the mailbox's call routing tab is the one that will be active.

When there is no active call routing plan (either none assigned to the mailbox or none that are active for the current time), the system will take default actions instead (what action depends on whether transfers are allowed for the given mailbox as well as the current state of the call).

Warning: Changing the settings for the Auto Attendant call routing template, assigned to auto attendant mailboxes by default (such as 991), can disable the auto attendant function and/or put the voice mail ports into an infinite loop. For most applications, the default settings for this template should not be modified.

Whether you opt to edit an existing call routing plan or create a new one, the system will open a dialog for editing similar to that shown below. Other than the title bar, the dialogs for creating a new call routing plan and for editing an existing plan are virtually identical.

To save your changes, click OK. If you are creating a new template, the system will prompt you to enter a filename before saving the file; if you are editing an existing template, it will just overwrite the existing file. In either case, Cancel will discard any changes not previously saved.

Note: If you want to create a new template based on an existing one, use the Copy option, then edit the copy.

The above figure shows the dialog for editing a call routing plan, with the Standard call routing plan loaded. Note that it is divided into two sections: Call Routing Properties and Optional Completion Properties.

Call Routing Properties

This section includes the settings for the schedule that determines when the template is active as well as the settings that determine what to do at the start of the call (when someone is attempting to transfer to a mailbox using this template).

Property	Description
Starting At	Time of day when the template becomes active, for any day on which it is allowed to be active.
Ending At	Time of day when the template becomes inactive, for any day on which it is allowed to be active.
Days	The days of week for which the Starting At and Ending At times are valid; the template will be inactive for the entirety of any day not selected.
Routing Address	The mailbox address used by the Routing Technique when routing the call. If any address other than Office Extension is chosen you will need to create that address in any mailbox that will use the template. Otherwise, you may experience serious problems when attempting to transfer to the mailbox.
Routing Technique	The manner in which the call is routed on the initial transfer attempt. This will almost always be extension transfer (paired with Office Extension as the routing address). Note: If the mailbox has call blocking enabled, then the call will be routed to the mailbox greeting rather than attempting a transfer.
Routing Method	This will always be Standard Method and should not be changed.
Routing Chain/Complete	The action to take after the greeting has been played and (if appropriate) a message has been recorded. If you select Execute Mailbox, another selection box will appear to the right; select the mailbox to execute from that list.

Routing Complete Actions

The following actions are provided for use by the Routing Chain/Complete setting:

Action	Description
Disconnect	Hangs up the call immediately.
Execute mailbox	Leaves the current mailbox and executes the active call routing plan for the specified mailbox.
Launch IVR application	Reserved for future use.
Return to attendant	Returns the call to the current location's auto attendant mailbox.
Transfer to operator	Transfers the call to the extension of the current location's operator mailbox.

Optional Completion Properties

This section includes the settings that determine the action to take if the call returns to voice mail because the transfer attempt was not successful. Each of the following settings uses a drop-down box to select from a predefined list of options. If the option selected requires a secondary setting, another drop-down box will appear to the right. For example, if Execute Mailbox is selected, a secondary drop-down box will appear to the right from which you can select the mailbox number to execute.

Property	Description
Ring No Answer	The action to take when a call to the extension is not answered.
Busy	The action to take when the extension is busy.
No Plan Active	Not used; deprecated. If no plan is active, the system will take default actions based on the call status: On RNA, it will perform the Ring no answer processing. On busy, it will perform Busy/Queuing processing. On failure due to network problems, it will perform Return to attendant.
Telephone Network Problems	The action to take if errors on the telephone network occur (e.g., no dial tone or no ring back).

Optional Completion Actions

The following actions are provided for use by the settings found under Optional Completion Properties:

Action	Description
Busy/Queuing processing	Plays the busy greeting and, if the COS allows, offers the option to join a call queue for this extension. Otherwise, it will take a message, if appropriate, after playing the greeting. This option is only available for the Busy setting.
Disconnect	Hangs up the call immediately.
Execute mailbox	Leaves the current mailbox and executes the call routing plan for the specified mailbox.
Immediate record	Begins recording a message immediately, without playing any greeting or prompts. Whether a beep is played first or not depends on the configuration of the assigned COS.
Launch IVR application	Reserved for future use.
Play blocking greeting and go to voice mail	Plays the selected mailbox greeting and invokes the assigned SDA menu, recording a message if appropriate.
Return to attendant	Returns the call to the current location's auto attendant mailbox.
Ring no answer processing	Plays the RNA greeting and invokes the assigned SDA menu, recording a message if appropriate. This option is not available for the Busy setting.
Transfer to operator	Transfers the call to the extension of the current location's operator mailbox.

How It Works

The call routing plan is used to alter how a call is processed by the system in one of two places: either at the start of the call (when the extension is first dialed) or at the end of a call (after it has been answered or not answered). One further consideration is the schedule that specifies the time period and days of the week during which the template is considered active (collectively known as the time window).

Time Window

The time window determines when the template is active and when it is not. For any time that falls outside of the time window, the template is inactive and has no effect on the call whatsoever. The only caveat to the time window is the Template Disabled check box on the Call Routing Plans property page; if the template is marked as disabled, then it is considered inactive at all times on all days regardless of the time window settings for the template itself.

Note: If you assign more than one template to a mailbox and they have overlapping time windows (such that both would be considered active during a given time period), the one listed first will be the one that is used. In searching for an active routing plan, the system moves from the top down, stopping at the first template that is considered active.

Start of Call

In this context, start of call is defined as either when a caller dials the extension from within the system (e.g., at the main greeting auto attendant or during some other mailbox's greeting) or when the caller selects an SDA action that has been defined to transfer to an extension. In either case, the first thing the system does is check for an active call routing plan.

End of Call

In this context, end of call means either that the transfer was completed successfully or the call has bounced back to the voice mail system (VMS) because either it was not able to complete the transfer or the call went unanswered or the line was busy (or DND). Note that on integrated systems using blind transfers, a call bounced back on busy or ring no answer may come into the system as a 'new' call on a different voice port; nevertheless, it is still treated as the 'end of call' in this context (as long as the call is integrated in a way that identifies it as having been forwarded on busy or RNA).

The first thing the VMS does in this case is to check for an active call routing plan. If there is no active plan, then default actions are used instead.

Note that for standard mailboxes, absent the caller selecting an SDA action, the VMS will default to taking a message after the appropriate greeting is played, unless the assigned COS does not allow messages to be taken (in which case it will typically return to the main greeting auto attendant).

If a call routing plan is active, then the actions taken will depend on how the settings listed in the Optional Completion Events section are configured. They may or may not be the same as the default actions listed above.

Why Use It

As discussed in the How It Works section above, the VMS will automatically take certain call routing actions by default if no plan is assigned to the mailbox or if the assigned plan is not active. So why would you create and assign a different call routing plan template? To change how the calls are processed.

For example, you may not want to enable call queuing, as it can quickly tie up a lot of voice ports, preventing callers from being able to leave messages and subscribers from being able to retrieve messages. This can easily be a problem on small systems. So you may want to make sure that your mailboxes are using a call routing plan template that has the Busy condition assigned the action Play blocking greeting and goto voice mail rather than the Busy/Queuing processing action. And, in fact, this is exactly how the Standard call routing plan template—the one used by standard mailboxes by default—is configured.