Creating a Company Directory

Company directory are used to create a company wide directory and/or directories for individual departments or groups.  A very common use case for a company directory is as an option in an IVR (digital receptionist) when direct call through to extensions is restricted.  The directory feature allows the caller to search by name and it will prompt for first letters of the name to dial to. When it find a match, for example, caller enters a-l-e on the keypad and there is an extensions with name Alex, then the system will connect the caller directly to that extension (without caller having to dial it). The directory requires all users of that directory to record their names through the VM setup, otherwise the directory will read out the letters of the users name before connecting through.

A simpler method for setting a company directory for a smaller team (below 10 users) is to use an IVR instead of a directory.  The main difference is that the IVR plays a recording that goes through all the names & extensions and the caller can dial the extension when they hear it as opposed to the dial by name search option of the directory.

To create a new directory click the  button from the main menu and then click on the  button.  Existing directories can be edited by selecting from the list on the right.

Basic Required Fields

• Directory Name – The name of this directory. This is the name displayed on the destination sub-menu when directory entity is used as destination of a previous workflow step.
• Directory Description – Extended description of this directory.
• Announcement – Greeting to be played on entry to the directory.
• Invalid Retries – Number of times to retry when receiving an invalid/unmatched response from the caller.
• Invalid Retry Recording – Prompt to be played when an invalid/unmatched response is received, before prompting the caller to try again.
• Invalid Recording – Prompt to be played before sending the caller to an alternate destination due to the caller pressing 0 or receiving the maximum amount of invalid/unmatched responses (as determined by Invalid Retries)
• Invalid Destination – Destination to send the call to after Invalid Recording is played.

Advanced Fields – explained

• CallerID Name Prefix – Prefix to be appended to current CallerID Name.  You can optionally prefix the CallerID name. ie: If you prefix with “Sales:”, a call from John Doe would display as “Sales:John Doe” on the extensions that ring.
• Return to IVR – When selected, if the call passed through an IVR that had “Return to IVR” selected, the call will be returned there instead of the Invalid destination.
• Announce Extension – When checked, the extension number being transferred to will be announced prior to the transfer

Adding Directory Entries

1. From the Directory entries on the bottom click the
2. From the pull down list select the target extension.  This will autofill the Name and Dial columns with the users name and extension.  Note that selecting the “All Users options will create directory entries for ALL extensions.  Custom Entry will allow to specify a full dial string.  This is useful when re-directing to an external number such as a cell phone.
3. Options for the Name Announcement column
   • Voicemail Greeting – this is the default option that we recommend using.  It will play the name of the user as recorded in the voice mailbox options.
   • Text To Speech – not working … we used to support Google translate here, but this service is no longer available without compromising privacy so we stopped supporting it.
   • Spell Name – will spell the name entered in the Name column for this directory entry.  The name to spell out will need to be re-typed over the gray value already pre-filled.
4. Options for the Dial column
   • Direct dial to the user’s extension
   • Indirect dial where selecting the name of the President from the directory will dial someone else.

Saving the config

Press the  button at the very bottom to save changes, and then click on the  to have the changes take affect immediately.