Introduction
Auto Attendants let people who call in, navigate a menu system so they can be connected to the right department, person, or the operator in your organisation. When you create an Auto Attendant, you will choose your greetings, set up your menus, and then choose how to redirect calls.
This article provides guidance for Phone System administrators looking to create, edit/update and delete Auto Attendants for their organisation.
This article will outline:
- Adding a new Auto Attendant (including advanced optional settings)
- Editing an Auto Attendant
- Deleting an Auto Attendant
Adding an Auto Attendant
To add a new Auto Attendant:
1. Once logged into the Phone System PowerApp, select ‘Auto Attendant’ from the homepage.
2. You will be directed to an Auto Attendants landing page where you will see any Auto Attendants created, and have the options to add, edit and delete Auto Attendants.
If your Auto Attendants are not visible, click ‘Refresh’ to reload the view.
3. Select the add option from the toolbar to be directed to an Add New Auto Attendant page.
4. On this page, you will be able to add a name for the Auto Attendant and set up an optional Operator – a person in your organisation to answer calls when a caller wants to talk to another person. This Auto Attendant can also be linked to another Auto Attendant or Call Queue.
5. On this page, you will also be provided with the choice to enable voice inputs via a toggle, and to associate your Auto Attendant with a Resource Account. A drop down will provide a list of Resource Accounts available.
All Auto Attendants must have an associated Resource Account to be successfully configured. Follow this link to find out how to configure a Resource Account.
6. Click the ‘Next’ button to be directed to the next page.
7. On the next page, you can set the Call Flow by selecting the greeting message suitable for your organisation. You can choose to ‘Play an audio file’, ‘Add a greeting message’ or have ‘No greeting’.
Depending on your selection, there will be a variety of dynamic options that will appear. ‘No greeting’ will provide no greeting and enable you to proceed. ‘Play an audio file’ will provide the option for you to upload an audio file as a greeting (.WAV, .MP3 and .WMA formats only, no larger than 5mb). ‘Add a greeting message’ will provide you with a box to type out the text you wish to have as the greeting (between 10-1000 characters long).
8. Upon clicking ‘Next’, you will then be presented with options on how the call can be routed: Disconnect, Redirect (to a voicemail, external phone number, person in organisation or voice app), or play menu options (either a text or audio message – whereby an audio clip can be uploaded and attached as per the previous step).
Depending on which option you select at this stage, your subsequent options will be different.
9. A) Disconnect is chosen: click on ‘Submit’ to create the Auto Attendant.
B) Redirect is chosen: select where you would like the call to be redirected to – voicemail, external phone number, person in organisation or voice app, then click ‘Submit’ to process changes.
C) Play menu options is chosen: toggle whether the greeting message is text (insert text message) or audio (upload and attach file) and click ‘Next’.
You will then be required to set up dial keys for your menu options. At least one dial key needs to be configured before being able to submit for play menu options. For example: For sales, press or say 1. For services, press or say 2.
If redirect to, or ‘play menu options’ and route to either a user (person in organisation) are chosen, the user is required to have a Phone System licence assigned, in addition to a Calling Plan Licence (should Calling Plans be used), and a phone number assigned. If these are removed from the user (or if the user leaves the organisation), the Auto Attendant will become corrupted and not work.
10. Upon clicking ‘Submit’, you will be directed to a success screen confirming your Auto Attendant has been successfully added.
Advanced Settings (Optional)
After the initial creation of an Auto Attendant, there is also the functionality provided to configure advanced (optional) settings – Holiday Call Settings, Business Hours Settings and Dial Scope Settings.
Add Holidays
Setting up holidays for your organisation is not required. By adding holidays, you can set up your Auto Attendants to play greetings and messages for specific holiday dates, and you can also configure how to redirect the calls if required.
1. Navigate to the Auto Attendants landing page and select ‘+Holiday settings’ of the Auto Attendant from the list that you wish to add holiday settings for.
2. Provide a name for the holiday settings and input the start date/time and end date/time of the holiday duration. Click ‘Next’ to continue.
3. Select what you wish to happen for this holiday configuration from the drop down (No greeting, play an audio file or add a greeting message).
Depending on your selection, there will be a variety of dynamic options that will appear. ‘No greeting’ will provide no greeting and enable you to proceed. ‘Play an audio file’ will provide the option for you to upload an audio file as a greeting (.WAV, .MP3 and .WMA formats only, no larger than 5mb). ‘Add a greeting message’ will provide you with a box to type out the text you wish to have as the greeting (between 10-1000 characters long).
4. Click ‘Next’ to proceed to the subsequent screen. Here you will be presented with options on how the call should be routed for this holiday configuration – whether to disconnect or redirect.
5. Should redirect be selected, you will have the option to select from a drop down of whether to redirect the call to an external phone number, voicemail, person in organisation or voice app.
6. Upon clicking ‘Submit’, you will be directed to a success screen confirming holiday settings for your Auto Attendant have been successfully configured.
Business Hours Settings
Business hours can be set for each Auto Attendant. If business hours aren’t set, all days and all hours in the day are considered business hours because a 24/7 schedule is set by default. Business hours can be set with breaks in time during the day. All of the hours that are not set as business hours are considered after-hours. You can set different incoming call-handling options and greetings for after-hours. Although this is not required, by setting up after-hour settings, you can set up a person in your organisation to answer calls when a caller wants to talk to another person. You can also link this Auto Attendant to another Auto Attendant or Call Queue.
1. Navigate to the Auto Attendants landing page and select ‘+ Business hour settings’ of the Auto Attendant from the list that you wish to configure the business hours for.
2. You will be taken to the screen to set up the business hours for each day of the week for your Auto Attendant, by selecting each drop down for the start and end times. Multiple time parameters can be added per day by selecting the ‘+’ icon.
3. Select ‘Next’ to continue. You will then be required to select from a dropdown whether the caller is met with no greeting, an audio file, or a greeting message, for outside of the business hours parameters.
Depending on your selection, there will be a variety of dynamic options that will appear. ‘No greeting’ will provide no greeting and enable you to proceed. ‘Play an audio file’ will provide the option for you to upload an audio file as a greeting (.WAV, .MP3 and .WMA formats only, no larger than 5mb). ‘Add a greeting message’ will provide you with a box to type out the text you wish to have as the greeting (between 10-1000 characters long).
4. Select ‘Next’ after choosing your options. You will then be presented for how the call will be routed outside of the business hours you have selected (Disconnect, Redirect or Play menu options).
Depending on which option you select at this stage, your subsequent options will be different.
5. A) Disconnect is chosen: click on submit to update the hours settings for this Auto Attendant.
B) Redirect is chosen: select where you would like the call to be redirected to – voicemail, external phone number, person in organisation or voice app, then click ‘Submit’ to process changes
C) Play menu options is chosen: toggle whether the greeting message is text (insert text message) or audio (upload and attach file) and click ‘Next’.
You will then be required to set up dial keys for your menu options. At least one dial key needs to be configured before being able to submit for play menu options. For example: For sales, press or say 1. For services, press or say 2.
6. Upon clicking ‘Submit’, you will be directed to a success screen confirming successful after hour settings configuration for your Auto Attendant.
Dial Scope
The dial scope defines which users are available in the directory when a caller uses dial-by-name or dial-by-extension. You can set up the users or groups that will be listed and available in your organisation’s directory when a caller dials into this Auto Attendant. When callers use Dial by name and search for a person by their name using their voice or keypad, they will be then transferred to the users that have the Teams app installed. Only users who are licensed and assigned a number can be assigned to an Auto Attendant.
1. Navigate to the Auto Attendant landing page and select ‘+Dial Scope’ of the Auto Attendant from the list that you wish to configure the dial scope for.
2. Select which user group to be included from the drop-down list and click ‘Submit’.
3. You will receive a success screen confirming that your settings for dial scope have been saved successfully for that Auto Attendant.
Editing an Auto Attendant
Editing an Auto Attendant that has already been created will entail updating the required settings that were configured when it was initially created. To edit an Auto Attendant:
1. Navigate to the Auto Attendants landing page and select from the list the Auto Attendant you wish to edit. Select it and then select ‘edit’ from the toolbar.
2. You will then be taken to a screen to edit the configured settings for that Auto Attendant.
You will not be able to edit the name of the Auto Attendant
3. Upon clicking ‘Next’, you will progress through the same series of screens with fields, as was presented when the Auto Attendant was created.
4. You will be to update these settings as per your requirements (greeting message, audio file, play an audio file, and redirect, disconnect or play menu options).
5. Click ‘Submit’ once you are happy with your changes. You will be greeted with a success screen confirming your settings were saved successfully for this Auto Attendant.
Deleting an Auto Attendant
To delete an Auto Attendant:
1. Navigate to the list of Auto Attendants and select the Auto Attendant you wish to delete. Select it and then select the delete option from the toolbar.
2. A pop up will appear for you to confirm that you wish to delete this Auto Attendant. Click ‘delete’ to confirm.
3. A success screen will appear informing you that your Auto Attendant was deleted.
