sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems NEC Telephones & Systems Elite SIE/CAR, DIT, and VMS interaction

I'm new to the NEC Elite world. A new customer has an Elite 48 system and the original vendor that had relocated and done some reconfiguration after the move is no longer in business, so I agreed to learn to support the system. Thanks to all the info found here, I've enjoyed some initial success. But I can't find any info explaining the interaction between SIE/CAR keys, trunk DIT, and voicemail main greeting, public messages, and msg waiting lights. I know there has to be some, because when I deleted a bunch of SIE keys that were used by an old autoattendant configuration, the voicemail message collection for the main greeting went swirling in the toilet. I have crawled thru the Elite program manual and VMS Tech guide, but I can't put together the interactions.

In the old location (much larger) the autoattendant directed calls to different groups using a bunch of different SIE/CAR keys. The vendor that relocated the system did as little as possible and left all the SIE/CAR keys on all the phones and just used one of them to handle all calls. Trunks first rang on the reception phone and then were delay DIT to SIE/CAR 200 and went to the VMS. SIE/CAR 200 appeared on all sets, but calls on hold could not be "one-button" accessed from all sets. System only has three lines and customer wanted to make life simpler by squaring the system to just have three CO line keys on each set. When I took off the SIE keys and put CO line keys on all the sets, the VM still answered the calls with the main greeting but would not take messages. Changed the main greeting transaction box in vm to "take msg" and it seemed to take a message, but I couldn't figure out what box the message was going to and no message waiting lights were activated. Didn't show up as a public message or in any box that I could see. I tried putting an ext or 9xxx box id after the "take msg", but that didn't seem to change anything.

I have temporarily changed the DIT from the SIE 200 to the reception phone (100), changed the transaction box in vm to target ext 100, recorded the "main greeting message" in personal box 100. This works but the receptionist had to give up her personal mail box so that all callers aren't leaving messages in a "dark hole" that I can't find. The customer is OK with this configuration, but I know it is not "right", so I'd like to figure out how it should be configured.

Any pointers that will help me understand the SIE/CAR, DIT, and VMS interaction would be greatly appreciated.

[This message has been edited by TxHillCountry (edited August 26, 2004).]

Think of a CAR key as a virtual analog port. You can fwd it & use it in any way you might need.
An SIE key is simply the appearance of any port in the system on another phone.
Hopes this helps.

You can have the general mailbox and the personal mailbox for the receptionist be one mailbox with a separate greeting for both. Create a transaction box with the receptionist as the owner. This will serve as the general mailbox. In the greeting fields record your greetings for the general mailbox. In the action field choose take message. In the name field record something like "general mailbox." And in the action field of the Opening box page choose go to the transaction box. So, after the opening box greeting is played the call is directed to the transaction box where the caller will hear the general mailbox greeting and can leave a message. The message will appear in the receptionist's mailbox with a header saying it's from the general mailbox.

Thanks. Understood purpose/function of SIE/CAR on the PBX side. I just seem to be missing something about how they relate to functions in the VMS. The info that messages for a transaction box go to the box owner helped some. Gives me someplace to start looking. Still haven't figured out how the transfer>greeting>action sequence for the main greeting was working in the old configuration, but I think I may be able to cobble together a working solution now.