atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Avaya - Lucent Telephones & Systems Avaya Partner system and MLS-34D Telephones - Learning basic system functions

Howdy everyone,

I work for several different companies handling various office administrative duties (sort of an all around guy that handles more technical end things). A couple companies have had questions and needs with their phone systems (which are relatively small). Some is basic programming changes etc. My familiarity with phone systems is very minimum (not sure how I ended up on that end of the spectrum). I really would like to learn the basics of phone systems so any help in that area of things I could read or do to learn more would be great!

My question for today though is more specific. Inbound calls are currently answered after X number of rings by an automated assistant. We would like to have it go directly to a live person in the office and if the phone were not answered after so many rings then it would go to the automated assistant.

The Telephones are MLS-34D’s. I’m assuming it’s an Avaya Partner system but don’t even know that. The system was set up by an employee that no longer works with us so we aren’t really familiar with how it works. I’m not sure at this point if it would be worth it for us to try and get a support person for our system or if I should just figure out how to do it myself. So far the system has worked fine for the last 2 years or so and we really haven’t had any needs.

Hope this is enough information for now. I’m looking more for the general advice of should I do this or should we hire it out?

Thank you to all in advance!

Jordan

1) All of the technical documentation for all Avaya products is available for free on their web site. You will need to know exactly what system and voicemail you have to find the correct documents.
2) Once you have spent 1 hour trying to figure out what system and voicemeail you have, another 2 hours trying to find the correct documents to download, another 4 hours beating your head against the wall trying to figure out the programming manual, and finally realize that you do not have the passwords, you will probably call in a certified technician.
Do yourself a favor and eliminate all of the previous steps by calling someone who knows what they are doing. You can ask them to give you some basic training on basic programming so that you can administer the small stuff in the future.

First, find the 'brain' of the system. From here you can figure out what modules there are, and thus what they have. This should be where you start.

As paul said, Avaya has lots of documentation on their website. You will also want to download the 'programming template'- when in programming mode, the softkeys have different uses related to programming.

I'd recommend a backup/restore PC card- it's about $80 and lets you quickly undo any mistakes. You should sell it to the client if you can; this is a good thing to have around because it will save them a costly reprogramming if their memory is lost for whatever reason. I HIGHLY recommend this- if you don't know what you are doing and do not back it up, you may create a costly problem for your customer!!!!

Also the following instructions apply for a Partner ACS R3 or later as I recall. They may be wrong. You are encouraged to check the docs yourself and make sure you understand what you are doing. I provide the following to help, but do not follow it blindly!

That said, you can only program this from Ext 10 or 11. Hit Feature-00; then left Intercom (system program, see your programming template) twice. This puts you in System Programming mode- be careful as you can screw up the system from here. This may be protected with a password, if you don't have the password you are sort of screwed. I hear there are backdoor passwords, but I don't know them and we aren't allowed to share them here.

First to back up- hit #124. Press Enter (softkey see programming template) and the backup will start, and tell you when it finishes.
Then start auto backup- #123 (you can always hit #XXX in system program to access another option). This backs up to a second data slot on the card at 2am on the first of each month. Good to have. Set it to active.

For what you want to change- I believe you'd want option #506 - VMS Hunt Delay. You set on a per-line basis the number of rings before the AA picks up. It first asks for mode, 1 is day 2 is night. If you don't use night mode just program mode 1. Using the forward/back and up/down keys (see your programming template) increase this number.

Then you need to decide which phones will ring.
Hit the second Intercom button (central tel program). Punch in the extension you want to make ring. (from here the top half of your programming template is useless, only the Intercom keys work)
At this point many of the softkeys will light up or blink- these are the keys assigned to lines. Lit means they ring, slow blink means they ring after a delay, fast blink means they don't ring at all. You can push each line button to toggle through the modes. Do this for each line that you want to ring.
If you want to program more than one extension in each mode- when you are done with an exten, press right intercom (central tel program). this will put out the lights and let you choose another extension to program. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Finally when done, press Feature-00 again to exit programming mode.

The result if everything went well is that the line(s) you modified will wait before going to auto attendant and the extension(s) you modified will ring.
If everything goes well- within a month your new configuration will be auto backed up to the data card. The card would then have two files on it- MAN.xxxxxx which is before the change, and AUTO.xxxxx which is after the change. You can restore either one at any time- Feature-00-2xleftintercom to get into system programming, the #125 to restore. It will prompt which one to restore.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

The backup/restore card will be a valid option if the system is a Partner ACS.

Exactly. He is using MLS phones so it is not very new. I a betting Partner II, maybe a Plus.

Thank you all for your replies and help!!! You are all really appreciated! This is going to get me started in the right direction!

paul144,
Good idea. If any local dealers are interested in giving this company some ideas/quotes about a phone system that they will be needing sometime next year when we open a second office you are welcome to contact me via PM and I’ll give you some of our details and we can go from there. Actually also have church looking to upgrade an old phone system sometime probably in the next 6 months.

IronHelix,
Thanks for the detail instructions. I’ll take a look at our models and check with our old admin and see if we are doing the backups at least. At that point I might be willing to go through the documentation and try a few feature changes.