atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Comdial Telephones & Systems Comdial DSU II MWI issue

I have a customer with a Comdial DSU II and a PC based vmail (Key Voice type). It is a 4 port system. The customer has Impact style phones. The customer told us they used to see how many new vmail messages they had on the display of their phone, but now are not seeing this info. They are getting a blinking LED to notify them of new messages. I checked the system and noticed the SMDI com port connecter on the PC was not fully attached, i reattached it and rebooted the PC and the KSU. Its still not working and the customer say that this was definitly working last week.

Any ideas of what to check for?

serial integration trouble, port on the pc or DSU or a bad line cord, could be plugged into the wrong phone system port.

Mark hit it on the head.

the line cord has been replaced and is plugged into com port 3 on the KSU. after rebooting the vm, the message says "updating MWI" and eventually says "update complete" but with no effect on the display of the phones. Is there a feature to toggle the displays of the phones or are we pretty sure its a communication problem with the serial connection?

Make sure the serial integration is connected to the correct port on the DSU and voicemail (assuming the voicemail has 2 serial ports). Also, it's important that the voicemail ports are connected in the correct order. Call each voicemail port and make sure voicemail answers on the port you expect it to. If not, that could be your problem. One other thing: make sure the comdial.lnk file still contains the correct voicemail extensions.

Justin

the integration had been working for some time so I'm not sure what changed to cause the vm message display on the phones to quit working. there is a message waiting lamp that lights correctly, thats why I'm thinking it is a phone system setting that someone inadvertently changed.

The one that is working may not be using out-of-band (serial) integration, but instead may be programmed to use DTMF integration for lighting the MWL.

Keep in mind that a light could be lit from an OLD command (prior to the problem). If there is nothing to turn the light off, it would continue to flash forever.

As to the "why" it started happening, if the machine got moved for whatever reason, and then the voicemail ports got reconnected in the wrong order (this is a pretty common occurrance if it was disconnected/reconnected, and the person didn't mark the cables), this could be the reason. It was mentioned that the SMDI cable was "not fully attached". If the machine had never been touched, it seems odd that it would have been found with the SMDI cable in that state. That's why I'm asking about the voicemail port connections.

Justin

The visual MWI indication does seem to be working, it is cleared when messages are deleted and is lit when there are new messages. The 2 line cords for the voicelines are connected in order as well.
It seems that the serial connection was orginally loose because there were no screws holding it to the PC and I think that the PC was slit out from the desk.
Is there a way to change the COM ports that the system uses, i know how to change the settings for the Com ports in the DSUII, but do not see where you designate it to be used for Vmail. Same question for the actual PC.
Is there a way to test the com port, such as connecting a laptop to the Com port and using Hyperterminal to view or send commands to test the port on the DSU or the PC.
I would like to be 100% sure before telling the customer that a port is bad and that withour replacing hardware they loose this option.

The DSU2 had 4 serial ports. Voicemail is still connected to com1 or com2. If you replaced a cord, make sure it's pinned exactly like the one you replaced.

Update- Problem fixed
The issue was with the com port on the Keyvoice system. We changed voicemail system to use com 2 instead of com 1 for serial integration and the problem was fixed. Com 1 appears to be damaged, i was able to connect it to a laptop and saw a lot of garbage info being sent to the phone system.