Voicemail Overview

Cloud Voice includes a built-in voicemail system at no extra cost. This page explains the kinds of mailboxes available, the places where calls can be routed to voicemail, the ways you can tailor the experience, and the capacity limits you are free to change.

Types of mailboxes

You can set up two kinds of voicemail in Cloud Voice:

• Extension voicemail: a private mailbox that belongs to a single extension user.
• Group voicemail: a shared mailbox that lets a team split the job of reviewing and replying to messages.

Group voicemail works well when your organization is split into departments. If you create a group mailbox for a Support team, for instance, callers can leave messages for the team as a whole, and any member of that team can open the shared box to listen to what customers left.

Tip

Reach for group voicemail whenever more than one person needs to see the same messages, such as a Support, Sales, or Billing team. It keeps a single person from becoming the only one who can hear what a customer said.

Where voicemail can be used

Cloud Voice gives you several routing options for sending callers to a mailbox:

• Extension: let callers record a message when the extension user cannot pick up. See Forward extension users’ calls to voicemail.
• Ring group or queue: fail over to a group mailbox when no agent is available or the wait time runs out. See Set a voicemail failover destination for a ring group or queue.
• IVR: give callers the choice to leave a message when the menu does not answer their question. IVR (Interactive Voice Response) is the automated menu that plays options such as “press 1 for Sales.” See Let callers leave voicemail from an IVR.
• Any inbound call: dedicate a line to collecting feedback when live phone support is not needed. See Forward inbound calls to voicemail.

Note

Voicemail is not a switch you flip once for the whole system. You set it as the destination on each feature separately (the extension, the ring group or queue, the IVR, or the inbound route), so a call only reaches a mailbox where you have routed it.

Ways to personalize voicemail

Several settings let you shape how voicemail sounds and behaves:

• Language: choose which language the system prompts play in for a group or extension mailbox. Callers who reach the mailbox hear the prompts in the language you pick.
• Greeting: record a custom greeting for the whole system or for one extension, and let users switch greetings based on their presence (the status that shows whether they are available, away, and so on). See Voicemail Greeting Overview.
• Notifications: alert users to new messages in several ways, including on their IP phone (the desk phone that connects over your network), by email, or through the Cloud Voice App. See Voicemail Notification Overview.
• Envelope playback: optionally announce message details before playback, such as the date and time, the caller ID, and how long the recording is. See Configure Message Envelope.
• Caller experience: smooth out how callers leave a message with options like reviewing a recording, dropping a message without ringing the extension, and breaking out to an operator. For details, see:
  • Allow Callers to Press a Key to Leave Messages
  • Allow Callers to Dial an Extension from Voicemail
  • Allow Callers to Break Out from Voicemail
  • Allow Callers to Review Voicemail Messages

Note

Language and greeting are two separate settings. Language controls only the automated system prompts (the built-in instructions callers hear). It does not change your recorded greeting, so set a greeting separately if you want callers to hear a custom message.

Capacity and limits

Each mailbox ships with the following defaults, and you can adjust them within the listed ranges:

• Message length: adjustable from 1 to 15 minutes. Out of the box, a recording must run at least 2 seconds and can last up to 10 minutes. Tightening these limits is a good way to cut down on empty recordings (from silent hang-ups) and overly long messages. Note that the default ceiling (10 minutes) sits below the highest value you can set (15 minutes), so raise it if callers need more time. To change these values, see Limit Voicemail Message Length.
• Mailbox capacity: adjustable from 1 to 500 messages. The default cap is 100. To change it, see Auto Cleanup Voicemail Messages.
• Storage time: unlimited by default. A value of 0 means messages are never aged out. To set a retention period, see Auto Cleanup Voicemail Messages.

Caution

Capacity and storage time are enforced by auto cleanup. When a mailbox reaches its message cap or a message passes the retention period you set, the system automatically deletes the oldest messages to make room. Deleted voicemails cannot be recovered, so raise the cap or lengthen the retention time before it is reached if the recordings need to be kept.