You have the option of adding more advanced features to your auto attendant setup with special menus. These built-in, pre-programmed menus give you advanced features such as dial-by-name and dial-by-extension without requiring any special programming on your part. You just have to link these menus into your greeting menu as appropriate.
The dial by name menu allows callers to reach your users by spelling the last and first name of the people in your company. The menu will prompt callers for enough letters to uniquely identify each person in your directory. For example, if you have just one user in your system with a last name starting with ‘A’, ‘B’, or ‘C’, that user will be called as soon as the number 2 (ABC) is pressed.
Click on the pencil (edit) icon to configure options for this menu. You can exclude certain users from the directory and change the programming to start with first or last name.
The dial by extension menu allows callers to reach a particular user in your system by dialing the 2- (or more) digit extension associated with that user. By convention, the dial by extension menu is linked to your main menu so that it is invoked when the caller presses the number 9. This allows your callers to reach any user in your system by pressing 9xx. For example, 901 to reach extension 01.
The dial by extension menu is also a fundamental way for your users to be able to reach their voicemail boxes by phone. Since the dial by extension directory is so vital to your system, it cannot be deleted once it is installed.
You can incorporate special menus into your attendant system just like regular menus:
PLEASE NOTE that the greetings for these special menus are system-recorded, and do not need to be recorded or maintained, even when the user extension information changes.