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Thirdlane

Voicemail Settings

Voicemail Settings control how your mailbox behaves and how you are told about new messages. The most useful option for most people is email notification, which turns voicemail into something you can see and act on from your inbox instead of having to dial in to check.

Mailbox PIN. The PIN you enter to access your mailbox by phone. Choose one that is not easy to guess, since anyone with it can hear your messages.

Notify by email about new voicemail. Send an email whenever a new message arrives, so you know to follow up without dialing in.

Email Address. The address that receives voicemail notifications.

Attach messages to email. Include the voicemail recording as an audio file attachment, so you can listen straight from the email.

Delete after delivery. Remove the message from your mailbox once it has been emailed. This keeps your mailbox from filling up, but means the email is your only copy - so leave it off if you want messages to remain available in Connect and by phone.

Notify secondary email address. Also send notifications to a second address - handy for reaching an assistant, or a personal address as a backup.

Secondary Email Address. The second address that receives notifications.

Greetings

Below the notification settings, Connect keeps a library of named greetings and lets you choose which one plays in each situation. Record “Vacation”, “Working from home”, and “Conference week” once, then switch between them in a couple of clicks instead of re-recording every time something changes.

Click Add Greeting to create one. Give it a Name that says when to use it (“Out of office - back Monday” beats “greeting 3”), an optional Description, and then produce the audio one of three ways:

  • Upload a file - a WAV or MP3 you or someone else already recorded.
  • Record now - record straight from your microphone in the browser.
  • Read text aloud - type what the greeting should say and the audio is generated for you. This is the fastest option and the easiest to tweak; it requires text-to-speech to be configured for your organization.

Whatever you supply is converted to the format the phone system needs, so you do not have to think about file formats or sample rates.

Each situation then has its own selector:

Unavailable plays when you do not answer. Busy plays when you are on another call. Temporary plays instead of all other greetings while it is set - the one to use for vacations, since clearing it restores your normal greetings untouched. Recorded Name is not a greeting at all: it is your spoken name, played by the company directory and by prompts such as “please leave a message for”. Leave a situation on System default to use the built-in prompt.

A greeting that is active for a situation cannot be deleted until you point that situation somewhere else - otherwise callers would quietly drop back to the generic system prompt. Editing a greeting that is already active updates every situation it plays for, so there is nothing to re-select afterwards.

Tips

  • Turn on Attach messages to email so you can listen to messages anywhere without dialing in.
  • Use Temporary for absences rather than editing your Unavailable greeting - coming back is then one change instead of several.
  • Keep greetings short and lead with what the caller should do next: the alternative number to try, or when you will be back.
  • Be cautious with Delete after delivery: if the email is your only copy, keep it somewhere safe. Leave it off if you also want to review messages in Connect.
  • Set a strong Mailbox PIN and update it periodically, since it protects access to your messages.