Voice Mail Escape

Many organizations have jumped to capitalize on the simultaneous-ring feature of Lync, which enables users to answer calls to their work phone number at a Lync endpoint, or on a mobile phone over their cellular connection. This flexibility enables workers to never miss an important call, even if they step away from their desk.

The downside to this feature was that if the user’s mobile phone was turned off, or possibly was out of range for a cellular signal, the call would end up being answered by the user’s cellular voice mail system. This created an inconsistency in the greetings heard by callers and in how users managed their voice mail messages because some work messages were now in their personal cellular store.

Lync Server 2013 now allows a parameter called PSTNVoiceMailEscape timer to be set on a voice policy that specifies the number of milliseconds for which Lync Server should ignore a call being answered by a simultaneous-ring target. The overall concept here is that administrators can dictate a time value that is probably too soon for a human to answer a call, which means the user’s cellular voice mail probably answered. After this is detected, Lync Server 2013 ends the call to the simultaneous ring target, but continues to ring the user’s Lync endpoints. If the call still goes unanswered, the call is routed to Exchange Unified Messaging for voice mail.