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Multimedia Messaging - Messaging 2000 System

The telephone is vitally important to your business, for communicating with customers as well as with coworkers, suppliers, and other colleagues. Customers, especially, expect you to use the latest communications tools to provide the best service possible in order to make doing business with you easy.

That means bringing new communications technologies into your business can make the difference between having a competitive edge and losing customers.

Avaya Messaging 2000 is the smart, cost-effective way to enhance your telephone system with the latest multimedia messaging technologies that will increase customer satisfaction and help you run your business more effectively.

The Proven Benefits of Messaging

Messaging 2000 puts the power of integrated voice and fax messaging to work for your business, delivering solid benefits including:

• Reduced Costs Voice messaging minimizes the number of employees you need to answer your telephones. Callers can leave messages or obtain routine information without assistance from your employees—freeing them to prioritize and perform other duties as needed. Messaging 2000 fax capabilities can help eliminate the need for redundant resources such as dedicated fax lines and multiple fax machines.
• Increased Revenues Messaging 2000 makes your business available and responsive to customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Your sales department can use messaging to accept orders any time of the day or night—so you're accessible when customers need you. Use messaging tools to collect, track, and manage sales leads. Or, provide recorded product information on demand, by voice or fax, to supplement sales efforts.
• Improved Customer Service In addition to making your business accessible 24 hours a day, Messaging 2000 allows callers to reach the right person or department quickly and easily, without the frustration of no answer, transfers, or waiting on hold. Fax messages can be sent directly to a service representative for prompt action.
• Enhanced Productivity The convenience of voice and fax messaging means fewer interruptions to your day, and less unproductive time spent on the phone or checking the fax machine. Messaging 2000 helps you receive, access, organize, and share information with ease—making you more productive.
• Optimized Day-to-Day Operations Messaging also enhances your internal, daily communications, providing efficient ways for employees to access, forward, and ``broadcast" information anywhere within your business.

The same convenience is available to those who are away from the office. It means easier collaboration and faster decision making.

Easy-to-Use Business Tools

Avaya Messaging 2000 provides an array of user-friendly business messaging tools in one economical package.

• Automated Attendant answers and routes your calls promptly and courteously, 24 hours a day.
  You can have the Automated Attendant answer all your calls, select lines, or only the calls that your operator or receptionist is unable to take —whatever is most appropriate for your business. In conjunction with an overhead paging system, Messaging 2000 can even give callers the option to page you.
• Voice Mail allows callers to leave recorded messages in your password-protected mailbox any time—so callers can communicate with you even when you're away from your desk or out of the office. Using your password, you can retrieve your messages from any touch-tone telephone, any time. You can also share messages with coworkers, using a touch-tone phone to forward the messages to other voice mailboxes.
  Unlike handwritten messages, Messaging 2000 Voice Mail messages are never garbled, incomplete, incorrect, or misinterpreted.
  You hear each message in a caller's own voice and tone—so you hear much more than just the caller's words.
• The Fax Messaging option gives you the same flexibility that you get with Voice Mail, adding critical reliability and security benefits. With Messaging 2000, customers, coworkers, and colleagues can send a fax to your fax mailbox for retrieval from any fax machine, any time. Messaging 2000 notifies you the instant a fax is received in your mailbox. The faxes are printed when and where you specify, so their contents can remain confidential. Or, you can forward or broadcast a fax to coworkers to share important information. You can even ``attach" a voice comment to the fax before you forward it.

Easy Management of All Your Messages

Avaya Messaging 2000 offers a familiar, graphical Windows-base d interface that lets users manage all their voice and fax messages with ease, right from a desktop PC. The optional Visual Mailbox lets you quickly organize all your messages and prioritize your message handling, using pull-down menus and your PC mouse.

The Visual Mailbox window gives you a complete overview of your mailbox's contents, including:

• How many messages you have
• Whether messages are from outside callers or from other system users
• The day and time each message was delivered
• Message lengths
• Whether each message is voice, fax, or both
• The type of message delivery—normal, urgent, or private
• Whether a message has been forwarded to you by another user.

You can even add or edit personal comments in a message notes column on screen, to help you recognize messages or categorize them into folders for future reference. And with the Visual Mailbox, you can listen to voice messages or read faxes in any order, discard them, forward them, or save them as you wish.

Individual Call Management Features

The Visual Mailbox also includes features to help you personalize your call handling. Using your telephone receiver and on-screen ``tape deck" controls (rewind, stop, play, fast forward), you can record your mailbox greeting and other messages, which you can forward or broadcast to other Voice Mail users. You can even get confirmation when a message has been received.

The Visual Mailbox Call Handling screen lets you activate call blocking and choose handling options for your incoming calls.

For example, block calls to your extension and have them forwarded to another extension or to Voice Mail. Automatically send calls to another extension or Voice Mail whenever your line is busy. Or, switch from the no answer/busy option you use during the day to call blocking with customized message for after-hours calls.

The Visual Mailbox even includes a screen-based dialer that lets you dial outbound calls from your PC just by typing a phone number or selecting a number from your personal or corporate directory.

Messaging Made Even More Valuable

Affordable Messaging 2000 includes an array of design tools that you can use to easily build a variety of applications customized to your business and your customers' needs. For example, the optional fax retrieval ``information on demand" application lets you provide callers with access to documents by fax, 24 hours a day, without assistance from your personnel.

It allows callers to receive the information they want, immediately, regardless of time of day or where they are.

You can activate the announce-ment capability to provide routine information or to tell callers more about your company, products, or services —freeing staff for tasks that require personal attention.

You can also set up your voice messaging to handle information collection —a time-saving way to gather important information by recording callers' answers to pertinent questions. You can use it for automated order placement, customer or employee surveys, job application prescreening, and much more.

Graphical Customization Tools

The optional Visual Architect feature of Avaya Messaging 2000 is a graphical, drag-and-drop interface for creating customized applications for your messaging system and for individual user mailboxes. Applications include call routing, information on demand, information collection, and much more.

Visual Architect lets you view your applications on screen as you are designing them, then ensures that your application is complete and functional. It runs a ``logic check" to confirm that all variables are entered and valid. Visual Architect even automatically disables incomplete branches so callers can't get trapped in escape-proof loops in your Messaging 2000 system.

In addition, Visual Architect's viewable, printable application flow charts and annotated voice prompts make it easy for you to modify custom applications as your business needs evolve.

So, there's no need to start from scratch when you want to make changes. The optional Developers Toolkit lets you ``inject" an application developed at one location (such as your main office) into a Messaging 2000 system at another location. This saves time, simplifies system administration, and assures consistency from one office to the next.

The Visual Architect application builder provides an intuitive, graphical interface for creating and editing applications on screen.

Compatible with Your Phone System and Your Needs

Messaging 2000 integrates effortlessly with your Avaya telephone system—including PARTNER ® MERLIN LEGEND ® , DEFINITY ® Prologix TM , and DEFINITY BCS systems. It supports up to 16 voice ports, 4 fax ports 2 , and 60 hours of storage, for optimum messaging flexibility.

In addition, AMIS or OctelNet 3 networking makes messaging between remote sites both economical and simple. Using standard protocols, it extends your messaging capabilities across the country or around the world.