atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems VoiceMail Systems and Programming Replacement Voicemail

I have a customer with an Avaya Merlin Magix phone system and a Keyvoice Small Office voicemail. They are concered about the life of the Keyvoice Small Office voicemail and wanted me to look into backup or replacement. I believe I have the backup taken care of but was looking for some input for replacement. I would hate to sell them something that will not integrate into a new phone system because of the age of the Merlin. Any insight would be appriciated.

Thanks

Duvoice works well with magix.

Aleen is very good with Avaya product.

I would hate to sell them something that will not integrate into a new phone system because of the age of the Merlin.

That's pretty much ass backwards thinking. You get a new phone system and you get a new voice messaging system along with it from the same manufacturer integrated with the system.

I don't think anybody should consider a third party messaging system unless there is no other choice.

If the messaging system they have dies it's time to consider replacing the entire system, especially if they are not happy or are having problems with the phone system they have. If that is not the case keep in mind that the Magix is a robust system with replacement modules easily available. So if the Magix does what they want I would consider a Merlin Messaging which belongs with that system and can be readily replaced if necessary.

-Hal

Hal,
I must respectively disagree in part. (let me preface by saying I know very little of the Magix)
Yes, this is a great opportunity to have the customer upgrade, and with many sytems nowadays having inskin appliances, integration usually involves the use of Softkeys for navigation.
However, the Magix has no such aplication as far as I know, if it does I stand corrected. I would consider the needs of the customer over the branding of the equipment. There are quite a few 3rd party VMs that have been around for a while that can offer more bang for the buck. Almost all of which have robust predefined integration. Besides 90% (arbitrary statistic) of "system" VMs are just rebranded 3rd party systems. Nitsuko used CTL which also pops up in various forms under Toshiba and Sprint, AT&T had Amanda that was a MVX, NEC had Activevoice which Tadiran also used. Tadiran is now using a T3 in it's Office.
So to sum it up, If you are going to utilize a VM that sits ont eh floor and you are planning on using DTMF integration, then any VM should work well. As always use a little due diligence and talk to the manufactuer or seller for some verification. Additionally, A digit grabber (some VM have built in Digit Grabbers, or integration utilities) will always give you true results if you are able to customize the integration strings and a preloaded integration file doesn't work for you.

If your going to stay with the Magix, then stick with the Keyvoice. You have in my opinion, the best option for the Magix right now. Yes, it is a pain to back up, but all DOS based systems are. I think I might have had two crash in the last 5 years. I maintain a couple of Ghosted drives as backup.

The companies I have worked for have all been Avaya partners and I find them a bit overpriced. As for inskin VM I have found ESI c and S class to have the most bang for VM buck of any system if they need a lot of off site transfers to cell phones, etc. This is about the only system I will recommend to realtors (a dozen desktop extensions and a lot of field agents). When it comes to 3rd party VM integration, Avaya is a standard so I would expect to not have too much trouble with Avaya integration.Personally I prefer Nortel as the grey market support is excellent and pricing is good though the switch to call pilot VM has driven the price up.
Just my 2 cents.

What did you go with??????