Digital Receptionist or IVR

Information

The 'Digital Receptionist' page is the interface used to setup your auto attendant when people call your business or home. Normally heard as "Thanks you for calling MYBUSINESS, for Sales press 1, for Service press 2", etc.

Getting Started

• For Pre-freePBX 2.1 IVR's, see (history)

When you select Digital Receptionst, the first page is now a brief set of instructions on how to drive the IVR. You can either edit an IVR, if one is existing, or create a new one by clicking on 'Add IVR'.

Naming your IVR

Unlike the old Digital Receptionist system, this creates the IVR (and calls it 'Unnamed') as soon as you click 'Add' - You'll see it appear on the right straight away. You now have a screen that looks like this:



Your options are reasonable self explanitory:

• Change Name: This is simply the descriptive name that appears on the right, and in the drop-down menu of Destinations
• Timeout: This is the amount of time the system waits before sending the call to the 't' destination
• Enable Directory: If you switch this on, users will be able to dial the feature code for Directory from IVR and access the Directory service.
• Enable Direct Dial: If you enable that, users will, in addition to being able to dial the IVR options, be able to directly dial an Extension number
• Announcement: A System Recording that is played to users when they enter the IVR. This can be set to 'nothing'

Configuring your IVR

In the box on the left, enter the option for the user. This may be one, or a series of numbers, or, 'i', or 't'. 'i' and 't' have special meanings:

• i: This is the destination used when a caller enters an invalid option - if you only have 1 2 and 3 defined, and they push 4, it will jump to this destination. The default option for this, ff you don't supply an 'i' destination, its to replay the current menu. If they hit 'i' more than three times, the call is hung up.
• t: This is the destination used when nothing happens. You might wish to have this one go directly to an operator, in case the caller doesn't have a DTMF phone. As with 'i', the default is to replay, and if it's been replayed three times, hang up.

Note that with freePBX 2.1, Destinations are only displayed if there is at least one entry in there. So if, for example, you have the DISA module enabled, but no DISA entries, it will not appear in the list.

The rest of the page should be self explanitory. Use 'Increase Options' or 'Decrease Options' to alter the number of options available. This won't let you decrease it to less than the number of options that are currently set.

To delete an option, simply leave the selection blank.

When you're finished, click 'Save' and you have your new IVR.