Smart Number - Overview & Setup
What is the Smart Number service?
Your virtual assistant helps you stay in touch with your clients, colleagues and friends without wasting your time on unsolicited calls. It filters your calls and forwards only important ones to you where and when you want to be reached. You have one number and one mailbox for all your incoming voice and fax(1)communications. Here are some of the mobility services you get using the
Smart Number service:
- Your calls follow you on different numbers based on your own instructions.
- Your assistant can filter your incoming calls and let only the important ones through, and when you answer the call, it tells you who is calling so you can decide whether to take the call or forward it to a colleague or voice mail.
- You can set your status by phone or from the Web to let your callers know when you are In-Meeting, Out-Of-Office or Unavailable.
- An easy-to-use Web interface enables you to manage your status, your call filtering and call forwarding schedules.
- With the Auto-Fax option, people can call you and send you faxes on the same number
- Your voice and fax messages are sent to your Inbox as e-mails for convenient unified messaging access. You can also have SMS alerts to notify you when you receive new voice messages and faxes.
- All your calls are logged so you can view them on the Web for billing or follow-up.
Setting up your Smart Number Service
The configuration of your new Smart Fax service requires you to perform the following tasks:
- Define your phones(numbers where you can be reached)
- Configure your call forwarding schedules
- Set your call filtering preferences
- Your voicemessages will be sent to the e-mail address you entered when you initially created your virtual assistant account.
- You must also specify how you want to be notified when you receive new voice messages or faxes.
The call forwarding functions of the Smart Number service are applied to any calls you receive on your DID number or through the Virtual Receptionist (Auto-Attendant) service if you are a company member (employee).
Before giving your new Smart Fax number to your business contacts and friends, make sure that it is functioning properly as follows:
1. Disable the voice mail option on your other telephone devices.This is important to insure that all your voice messages go to one central location: your e-mail account. If for any reason, you can't disable the voice mail option on a device, make sure that the number of rings before transfer to voice mail is greater than the number of rings you set in your call forwarding for that device.
2. Test your new Smart Number serviceto make sure that your call forwarding schedules and voice mail delivery are functioning correctly. You can always go to your Web Portal and make changes to your call forwarding schedules and your telephone numbers.
- Dial your new Smart Number from any phone and confirm that your calls are handled according to your status and call forwarding schedules.
- Leave yourself a voice message and check in your e-mail account to confirm that you received an e-mail with the voice message attached.
Service is Ready to Use
- Go to Call Forwarding Schedules to customize your call forwarding schedules and set the rules on how you want your calls to follow you.
- Go to Status & Call Forwarding to set your phone status to In-Meeting, Out-of-Office, Unavailable, etc. or to have your calls forwarded to a specific telephone number.
- Go to Call Filtering to set the rules for your call filtering: select the type of calls you want to take or reject, activate call screening to know who is calling, and whether you want the assistant to use your Calendar for your phone status.
FAQs
Do I need A DID to use Smart Number?
Answer: Unless you are part of an organization that has a Virtual Receptionist service, you have to ask for a direct telephone number (DID). This DID becomes your personal number for the Smart Number service.
What is Auto-Fax?
Answer: Auto-Fax is an advanced Smart Number feature that enables you to receive faxes on the same telephone number where you receive your voice calls: your DID. With Auto-Fax, Evatel automatically detects incoming faxes, receives them and sends them to your mailbox. Auto-Fax is available only to users with a private DID number. Some ESPs may not offer the Auto-Fax option.
What is the Smart Fax Service?
Answer: Smart Fax is a special Smart Number dedicated to receiving faxes. This could be useful if you receive a large number of faxes or if you want to provide local fax numbers to your customers in different countries and have all the faxes centralized in your Inbox. Smart Fax is available only on systems that support the fax option.
with DID to Activate Auto-Fax?
Answer: Yes. You need a Smart Number DID to activate Auto-Fax, the feature that enables you to receive faxes on the same line. For Auto-Fax detection to work, the caller must press Start immediately after dialing the number without listening on the line. Your Smart Number with Auto-Fax can be considered as two numbers-in-one: one for voice calls and one for faxes. Evatel automatically detects the type of incoming call (voice or fax) and treats it accordingly.
Receiving Faxes on Smart Number
Answer: People can send you faxes simply by dialing your Smart Number with Auto-Fax detection, from a fax machine as they would to send any other fax. For auto-fax detection to work, the caller must press Start immediately after dialing the number without listening on the line. Your Smart Number with Auto-Fax can be considered as two numbers-in-one: one for voice calls and one for faxes. Evatel automatically detects the type of incoming call (voice or fax) and treats it accordingly.
What is Unified Messaging?
Answer: Evatel sends your voice messages and faxes to your e-mail account. Your faxes and voice messages are stored in your Inbox together with your e-mails to enable you to access them by phone or from your desktop or Web e-mail reader. This is the unified messaging feature of Evatel.
What happens when callers cannot reach me?
Answer: Callers who cannot reach you on your Smart Number will be offered the option to leave you a voice message just as they would leave it on a traditional voice mail or answering machine.
Where are my Voice Messages and faxes Stored?
Answer: All your voice messages and faxes received by Evatel are sent to your e-mail account and stored on your mail server. Evatel does not keep any copies of your voice messages or faxes.
How Do I Access my Voice Mail and Faxes?
Answer: You have many ways to access your Evatel voice messages and faxes:
- Using your e-mail readersuch as Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes. You can hear your voice messages, archive them, forward them or delete them from your desktop as you would for any of your e-mails. You can also view and print your faxes, archive them, forward them or delete them from your desktop as you would for any of your e-mails.
- By phone using Speech Outlook . You can also use the telephone to hear your voice messages, archive them, forward them or delete them as you would with any other voice mail system. You can also have Evatel forward, archive or delete your faxes by phone.
Are there Risks Caused by Voice Messages?
Answer: No. But some companies still block WAV file attachments because of their size and their suspected content. In fact, Evatel voice messages are standard .WAV files recorded at a rate of 8K bytes (kilobytes) per second. Most voice messages take less than 90 seconds, which represents a maximum of 720K.
Troubleshooting Smart Number Issues
Evatel
Possible causes and fixes: This may happen if your Call Forwarding Schedule does not find any phone to forward the call to. When no phone is found, Evatel assumes that you are "unavailable" to take calls. If you want to receive calls at that time, make sure that you specify at least one phone where Evatel can forward calls to you.
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