User’s guide
VoiceWorks
16
Working with group/broadcast mailboxes • D-1
Working with group/broadcast mailboxes
Group mailboxes: an introduction
Group mailboxes let you broadcast a master message to everyone within a predefined group
of users. When someone records a message in the group mailbox, the voice mail system
instantly “copies” it into the mailbox of each member who’s recorded a personal greeting.
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To
prevent unauthorized use, group mailboxes require entry of a
password before accepting a
message. Use
group mailboxes if a group of employees, such as your salespeople, want to be
able to easily leave messages for one another or receive them from outside callers.
There are 16 available group mailboxes, ranging
901–916. Each may have up to 1,000
members but we recommend keeping the maximum for each at 100. Group mailboxes can
record and playback messages only after a personal greeting is recorded, such as:
“You have
reached the group mailbox for the Sales Department…” (Deleting the personal greeting will
turn the mailbox “off.”) A group mailbox can have as few as one member; this could be helpful
if a particular extension needs to have multiple mailboxes.
Example: The receptionist may need both a personal mailbox and a “general delivery”
mailbox — the group mailbox for our example — for after-hours callers. (Setting the
group mailbox’s password to “0” lets it receive messages from anyone.) Each
mailbox greets callers differently, but the mailbox owner needs to retrieve
messages from only one location. It also allows her to retain a private mailbox,
rather than having to share her own mailbox with the entire company.
Note: A member can delete only his/her copy of a group message; a saved group message
will remain as a new message until deleted. A user cannot move his/her copy of a
group message to another mailbox.
The master message remains in the group mailbox until all members have deleted their copies
from their mailboxes.
Example: You have left a group message reminding each group meeting of a Friday meeting.
The next Monday, you can delete it from the group mailbox;
this deletes it from the
mailboxes of all members who have not yet deleted their copies of the message.
Warning: Deleting a message from a group mailbox automatically deletes all remaining
copies of that message in all group members’ mailboxes.
Warning: There is no message recycle bin (undeletion capability) for either the master
message or for each group member’s copy of the message. Once a copy is deleted
from a group member’s mailbox, the member can’t restore it; and, once the master
message is deleted, it’s absolutely gone.
Giving the group mailbox number and password to others allows them also to record master
messages. Once so authorized, members can distribute information among their own group.
Setting 0 (zero) as the password eliminates the password requirement; this is necessary if
outside callers are directed to the group mailbox, as described in our example, above,
concerning the receptionist and the “general delivery” mailbox.
Example: A group mailbox for a sales staff could also allow the warehouse to leave a
message advising against taking orders for items that are on back order. Sales
reps could also use the mailbox to communicate with one another.
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This keeps a group message from wasting space on the system long after all have heard it. The
assumption is that a mailbox with no greeting has no active user to clean out messages as needed.