Advanced Auto Attendant Overview Advanced Auto Attendant, aimed at small and medium business subscribers, offers an increased level of service compared to Standard Auto Attendant. In addition to all the features offered by Standard Auto Attendant, the Advanced Auto Attendant allows multiple menus with a finer scheduling control. It also includes more call handling options, such as Voicemail by Name and Voicemail by Extension, as well as greater control over the actions taken for any given key press. Both Standard and Advanced Auto Attendants can also be configured to allow callers to dial an extension at any point in the menu and not just on a Dial by Extension menu option. If you want to use this option, you must enable it as described in 2.4 and you should also ensure that your initial greeting mentions the option that a caller who knows the extension they require can dial it immediately.Planning Your Advanced Auto Attendant Before you start to set up your Advanced Auto Attendant, it is a good idea to sketch out the operation of each menu on paper. This allows you to plan what options you need from the menu and how each one will operate. For example, the main menu for a sales company may include the following options: Have a scheduled Attendant. Provide a main menu for business hours that provides the companies default greeting and menu. Have the ability to transfer to a sales menu that provides additional menu options. Transfer to speak with the Billing department. Dial by name. Dial by extension. Transfer to an operator. The sketch below shows how this menu would operate, including the key presses to access each option: For out-of-hours and holiday operation, Premium Attendant may provide an announcement, for example saying that the business is closed, (without allowing the caller to select any options), or it may provide an alternative set of menu options. Logging into Advanced Auto Attendant To configure your Advanced Auto Attendant log into the Auto-Attendant, following these steps: From the BG Administrator portal, select Lines and then click the Individual Line icon on the far right side of the page. As an alternative, you can access the CommPortal user login screen and enter the Advanced Auto Attendant Number and Password. The screen then displays the Advanced Auto Attendant. Configuring Advanced Auto Attendant Schedule You can configure your weekly schedule by clicking on the Weekly Schedule and Holidays Once in the Schedule screen, click on the Business Hours key and then click in the calendar and, while holding down the left mouse button, drag the mouse across the calendar to indicate the business hours. In the example below, the business hours are Monday – Friday from 9:00 am until 5:00 pm.  Any other time are considered non-working hours. Next you will need to select any non-working days such as holidays by clicking on the calendar icon in the Periods section of the Schedule page.  You can choose individual non-working days by clicking Special Days then select date(s) in the calendar, or you can use the Choose Public Holidays option to automatically add public holidays for your region. Configuring Advanced Auto Attendant Announcements In order to use your Advanced Auto Attendant you will need to record or upload the announcements that will be played as either your primary Business Hours or Non-Business Hours greeting as well as any other recorded announcements required. For example different key presses. Click in the Announcements tab to begin configuration. Click the Add New Announcement button and then follow the steps below. Enter the name and description of your announcement. To record your announcement using a microphone or headset connected to your computer, click the red record button. When you have finished recording, press the stop button and click on the Add button at the bottom of the interface. To upload pre-recorded announcements, select Upload Announcement from the drop-down menu on the announcement recorder and browse to the location of your announcement and click upload. After your upload has completed click the Add button. To record the announcement using your telephone, do the following. Create the announcement by adding a name and description and selecting Record By Phone from the drop-down menu. Make a note of the announcement number and then click on the Add Dial the main number for your Advanced Auto Attendant service provided by your service provider, enter the number for your Advanced Auto Attendant, enter the pin and then follow the prompts to record your announcement using the announcement number noted in the previous step. Configuring Advanced Auto Attendant Menus Next you will need to set up your Advanced Auto Attendant menu options. By default, there are two menus defined in Advanced Auto Attendant. These could be used as your main business hours menu and you main non-business hours menu.  You can add additional menus as required by clicking the Add button. Begin to configure your menu by providing a name and description and selecting the Menu announcement to be used by this menu, and then click Apply. Next you will need to configure the action for each key pressed for your menu by selecting the Keys link and then selecting an option using the dropdown menus for each key pressed in the menu. The options available for each key are as follows: Use Default (This option is default for all keys for new menus) Transfer to Phone Transfer to Voicemail Dial by Extension - including whether an announcement is automatically played giving initial instructions when this key is pressed, or whether these instructions must be recorded by the subscriber in the menu announcement Dial by Name Voicemail by Extension Voicemail by Name Intercept mailbox Go to Menu Return to Previous Menu Replay Menu Announcement – Return Announcement – Hang up Hang up Next, you will need to configure the timeout behaviour of your menu to address callers that do not press a key in this menu. Enter the timeout duration and the timeout behaviour from the dropdown list as seen below and click Apply. Configuring Advanced Auto Attendant Extensions If you plan on using dial by name or dial by extension, you will need to select the extensions and record a name for the dial by name. Clicking on the Callers are allowed to dial by extension only after selecting the "Dial by Extension" menu option link at the foot of the screen will give you the option to choose between At any time and  Only after selecting the "Dial by Extension" menu option. At any time: This means that callers can dial an extension at any point in the Advanced Auto Attendant menu and not just on a Dial by Extension menu option. Selecting this will now change the link to Callers are allowed to dial by extension at any time If you want to restrict dial by extension to Dial by Extension menu options select Only after selecting "Dial by Extension" menu option. and click Apply. It will now display that Callers are allowed to dial by extension only after selecting "Dial by Extension" menu option. To include or exclude an extension from dial by name, select the extension(s) by ticking the checkbox on the left of each extension and then click either Include Selected or Exclude Selected. To record the user's name click on the record link for the user. If a name has already been recorded, this link will display listen/change. To record names to be used for dial by name, click the record icon. If the spoken name has already been created, the screen will show listen/change rather than record, and you can click this link to hear the existing recording and change it if you need to. Use this recording interface to record the name or upload a spoken name recording, and click the SaveConfiguring Advanced Auto Attendant - Advanced Options In order to configure the advanced settings for your Advanced Auto Attendant, click on the Advanced tab and define the default handling for each key press. These actions will be available to callers in all menus unless you assign an alternative action to the key in the per menu configuration. Next, click on the Error Handling link and set the value and behaviour for Timeout, Call Transfers, Unknown Input and Invalid Extensions. Activating your Advanced Auto Attendant Finally, you will need to activate your Advanced Auto Attendant by going to the Main page and selecting the Turn On button. The Advanced Auto Attendant interface uses the following error messages and icons to alert you to incorrect or missing configuration. These are produced on page load, and are not updated dynamically. The Main tab has a Service Status panel that states your current schedule period and the menu that callers will hear. It also reports if you have errors in any menus, or one or more announcements is missing audio. The Schedule and Menus pages use a banner line to report any errors. The following icons are used to indicate incorrect or incomplete configuration error icon warning icon If there are any errors in your configuration, you will be warned against turning on Advanced Auto Attendant, and in some cases this will be prohibited. You should therefore resolve the configuration errors before attempting to turn Advanced Auto Attendant on.