Problem with # on external calls triggering VR

[frobnitz]

Hi. Today I got a call from an office to join me to a conf. call, and when the caller hit the # key to transfer me to the bridge, HS grabbed the line, dropped the external call, and acted like I had pressed the # from an internal phone.

I didn't think this was supposed to happen. The system is not configured to treat external calls like internal ones. I am using the HS (HAL 2000) PCI modem. It works very well, but I cant have calls dropping on me when someone else hits the # key. I was in my office when this happened, so I shut down HS before the office called me back a 2nd time, so I still managed to get on the bridge ok. What am I doing wrong here?

This brings up another issue for me. I haven't yet tried to do external access to HS (I have voicemail on that line), but I am an old Hal 2000 user, and I would like to be able to dial into HS, hit a key and then an access code to get the VR interface from an external call. When I converted to HS I never could figure out how to make this happen. The documentation for HSPhone is a little esoteric compared to HAL 2000. Do I have to manually hack the IVR script to enable this sort of thing?

Thanks in advance for the help.

Frob

[Rick Tinker]

Frob,

How long from the time you went off-hook to when the # key was pressed? HSPhone does ignore the # key after a period of time. I'd have to check to see what that time frame is as I forget off the top of my head, but if you wait 30 seconds I am sure it is less than that, and having it disconnect after that would definitely signal a problem.

To call in remotely, simply place the call, and then when you hear the voicemail greeting, press *# and then follow the prompt. The mailbox passcode that you provide has to be one where the mailbox is configured to allow voice commands - that is in the mailbox configuration.

The HomeSeer Phone documentation is in the HELP directory under HomeSeer, and the file is hsphone.chm. It may be a little esoteric, but that is because engineers wrote it whereas HAL had a non-engineer write theirs. I will pass along to my sister, who did the HAL documentation, that you like her handy work! Unfortunately, she now has a job that pays her, so she is not available to update ours. We will be looking at integrating HSPhone with HomeSeer right after the 2.0 release, or at least doing a .NET version of HSPhone, and so at that time we will have to revise all of the documentation because all of the Windows UI will go away. We will do all new configuration, directory, and mailbox config screens at that time so the docs will have to be updated.

In the current documentation, under the HomeSeer Phone topic, the 2nd item is Keypad Command Summary. This is the quick reference to moving around the system via DTMF, or after accessing the system you can also just give it a voice command or speak "messages" to be taken through the dialog to play your voicemail messages. This is all functionality built-in, but you can, if you so desire, modify it by changing the IVR scripts.

[frobnitz]

Rick, thanks for the reply.

I guess I don't understand why a timeout is needed for ignoring the #. I picked up the phone, not HSPhone, so it's not talking to the answering machine. Why shouldn't it ignore the # if an internal phone picked it up? Can I adjust this timer somewhere?

I'm an engineer too, but am trying avoid getting into the scripting to understand why the system is supposed to do if I can avoid it. I am a unix hack not a VB programmer, so the scripting used by HS isn't native for me. :-)

Thanks,
Frob