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Menus

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Menus are the workhorses of your Auto Attendant – it is where most of the behavior of an Auto-Attendant is built.  This is where the calls are actually processed by caller’s touch-commands.  When a caller navigates to a Menu, they will hear a Prompt or a greeting (You must add a Prompt to Media files before you can create a Menu).  The Prompt will usually give callers the options they have for navigating past the Menu to where they need to go.

Menus can do many things, like transferring to an extension, playing a recorded greeting, transfer to an external phone number, and go to other menus.  The way you build functionality into a Menu is by “Actions”.  The following Actions can be assigned to a menu.

  • Transfer: Transfers the call to selected extension
  • Collect-And-Dial: Takes digit input from the user and then attempts to dial that extension.
  • Play: Plays a media file, like a greeting.  Media files are located in Settings\Media Files
  • External-Transfer: Transfers the call to a phone number that is not part of your RingRx system.  Must be 10 digit number
  • Menu-Up: Sends the caller to the menu that got them to the current menu.  If the caller is at the top menu, it just re-plays current menu
  • Menu-Top: Sends the caller to the first menu.  If this menu is the first, it just replays the current menu
  • Menu-Sub: Sends caller to the targeted Submenu
  • Exit: Terminates the menu. No other options are used

To Edit or Create a Menu,

(an Auto-Attendant must already be created to create a Menu)

  1.  Select Settings\Auto-Attendants, and select the Auto-Attendant you want to create the Menu for
  2.  Select the Menus link to edit an existing Menu or Create First Menu link if no Menu exists under that Auto-Attendant
  3.  Assign a name for the Menu
  4.  Assign the correct Media File for Greeting to Play
  5.  Leave the remaining parameters alone unless there is a reason to change them (see Menu Parameter Options below for details).  Click Save
  6.  Now add your Action Items:
    1. Select your Menu (you should now see New Action link)
    2. Select New Action
    3. Under Digits, enter the number (e.g. Push “1” or push “2”, etc) you want to create an action for
    4. Under the Action dropdown, select the Action you want for the option
    5. Save
    6. Repeat adding actions until your menu is complete

Save.

Next you will create a schedule that will define when this Menu will play

There are a number of options that can help configure very specialized functions and behaviors of your Menu.  We have already built in defaults that have been commonly accepted in business and reflect what most people understand when calling in and getting a Menu  In general, it is not necessary to change these unless you have a very specific reason do to so.

  • Inavlid Sound – this is the audio recording that plays if a caller presses a button that has no function built into it.  Like if you have options 1, 2, and 3 built in your menu, and a caller presses 7, there is no function to 7 so we have to let the caller know they made an error.
  • Exit Sound – similar to Invalid Sound, its just an audio recording that we play to the caller when the make a selection that Exits the Menu.  The default simply says “Goodbye” before they are disconnected from the call.  Exits are not commonly used, but when they are, we play this recording.
  • Inter Digit Timeout – This is the amount of time in between key presses before we either execute an entry (if the caller entered a correct key press) or throw an error (if they entered something incorrectly).  A “Digit” refers to what button the caller presses on a menu.  The default is 2000 milliseconds (or 2 seconds).  So if a caller pushes a button, then pauses 2 seconds, we will use what they pressed as their intended instruction.
  • Timeout – This is the amount of time we let the Menu sit in an active state with nothing happening.  Default is 10,000 milliseconds (10 seconds).  If a caller gets to a Menu, then does nothing for 10 seconds, the Menu goes to its Timeout function.  The Timeout function will be to start all over again.  It will only do this as many as Max Timeouts before giving an error.
  • Confirm Key – This is the key callers can press to expedite the timeout.
  • Max Failures – If a Caller either enters an unrecognizable digit, or does nothing, it is considered an error.  If they do this the number of times in Max Failures, we Exit the Menu, which disconnects the call.
  • Max Timeouts – If a caller is not active and allows multiple timeouts to occur, we will execute the Timeout plan after the number of Timeouts in this field are exceeded.  The default Timeout plan is to Exist the menu, disconnecting the call.  But there are other options.  To create your own option, you can type “timeout” in the Digit field of an Action, and then set the behavior as you wish
  • Digit Len – This is the maximum number of digits allowable in the Digit field of an Action.  Default is 10, which is a pretty long number.  No reason to change this in general unless you are doing something specialized

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