11. Coverage Paths

Remember when you added a station that you had to add a coverage path ? At the point I was a little vague and i said it's used for voicemail mainly. We will go deeper into the coverage paths today and see what they are.

Basically, a coverage path tells the system  what to do if you're not answering the phone when somebody is calling. It's telling the system go to this number if the user does not answer the call within x rings or if specific criteria happen.

Each coverage path is identified by a unique number in the system and has a set of rules under COVERAGE CRITERIA that tells the system when to "forward" the call to the numbers defined in the COVERAGE POINTS section.

First here are the commands related to the coverage path

• add coverage path [x] (replace the x with any number you want)
  or
  add coverage path next (will give you the next available number - it's just an index).
• display coverage path [x]
• list coverage path
• remove coverage path [x]

ADD COVERAGE PATH [x] or ADD COVERAGE PATH NEXT

The are 3 sections (see the picture above, click the image if you find it too small) that we are going to look into

COVERAGE PATH: The red section is an "administrative" section. The most important point here is the "Coverage Path Number". This is the unique id that identifies this particular coverage path in the system. Remember that number that you added into the Coverage Path 1 into the station screen ? This is where you got the number from.  We are not going to discuss the rest of the options here as they are not that used in general. The coverage path number is not editable. It is set either by you if you issue the command add coverage path x or by the system if you issue the command add coverage path next. If you issued the command, you will the number x in here. If you issued the add coverage path next command, the system will give you the first available number and put it in here.

COVERAGE CRITERIA: This is the green area in the picture. It tells the system what are the condition for the call to be forwarded. So, if any of the conditions that you set in here happen then the call will be transferred to the COVERAGE POINTS section (yellow section) in the order that you define there. The conditions are set for internal (calls coming from other extensions) or external (calls coming from an outside trunk). The conditions are as follows:

1. Active: Call redirects if at least one line is busy. Sets to yes or no. If you set it to yes and assuming that if you have 3 lines programmed (call-appr) on your phone and you are on a call, then the next call would be transfered to the numbers defined in the yellow section. Depending on the internal/extenal field the condition would sound like: "If i'm on a internal call and somebody else calls please forward the call to ..." or "If i'm on a external call and somebody else calls please forward it to ...". Obvious, both can be set to y.
2. Busy. Call redirects if all your call-appr lines are busy. So, if the have 3 lines (just like in the previous example and assuming that you have all 3 busy with a call - 3 conversations at the same time) then the 4th caller would be send to the Coverage Points.
3. Don't Answer (and set up the number next to it). If you don't answer a line within the specified number of rings the caller will be forwarded to the Coverage Points
4. All. A call will be forwarded to a coverage point regardless of the station condition.
5. DND/SAC/Go to Cover. There are some buttons that you can add to a station that once activated would cause this condition here to be true. Those buttons are: Do Not Disturb, and Send All Calls. So if the user has pressed the buttons (they will be lit on the station) a new call would go to Coverage Points.

COVERAGE POINTS: This is the yellow section. You can specify a number of 6 "possible" forwarding points. Please note thought that in order for the call to move between these points, the previous point has to stay within the system. If you put point no 4 as your home phone number, don't expect point no 5 to pick it up if nobody answers at point 4. So it's important to remember: if you want to have an external number as a coverage point, make sure it's the last one in the sequence. For each number in here you will specify the number of rings the system tries before moving to the next point.

The points can be :

1. A extension. Just put in the extension
2. An announcement. Just put in the extension of the announcement in here. Please be advise that this will "always pick up" so any new point after this is useless as the system will stop after hearing the "announcement" picking up. As a result, make sure that if you're using announcement extensions for a coverage point, that point is the last point in the sequence.
3. Reception/attendant. Write attd in the coverage point.
4. A hunt group (will cover what a hunt group is later). Write hx (replace x with the hunt group number). Most of the systems implemented by Avaya would have a h99 in here (hunt group 99, is the voicemail).
5. A coverage answer group (to be covered in the next lesson). Write cx in here (x could be from 1 to 750 or 1 to 1000, depending of your system). Basically a coverage answer group is a hotline number where you have multiple people that can answer the same number.
6. A remote number. Write rx in here and then (x could be from 1 to 1000) and then add the corresponding external number in remote call coverage table (will cover this as well later). Now, a lot of people are saying that you cannot cover to an external number. Yes, you can. Related to this there is also a setting called Coverage of Calls Redirected Off-Net Enabled in the system-parameters. If this setting is set to n then once you cover to a remove coverage point, the call is out the door so the system will not be able to get it back and send it to the next point in the sequence if defined. As a result make sure that if you're using remote coverage points, you're defining them as the last ones in the list. If that setting is turned on, you don't have to worry about it as the system can move to the next cover point even if the previous point was a remote one. Bellow you can find a image with the particular setting.

DISPLAY COVERAGE PATH x

Displays the settings used by a specific coverage path. Assuming that you look into a station and don't know where a specific coverage path will forward the call, just type display coverage path and then the number and you're done. You can see all the setting in one screen just as bellow.

LIST COVERAGE PATH

This command will list all the coverage paths that you have defined in the system along with a summary of the options defined.

As you can see each coverage path is defined on 2 lines. First line will show you the first 3 points, the next line will display the rest of the other 3.

REMOVE COVERAGE PATH x

After issuing the command, you are presented with a screen that resemble the display cov path x. Press F3 to remove that coverage path or F1 to cancel the command.

If you wish to see who uses a particular coverage path, the command that will give you the answer is :

display coverage sender-group x. It will display a list of all the users that are using that particular coverage-path. In the example bellow you can see how coverage path 10 is used by station 1001 and 1002.