sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems ESI Telephones & Systems ESI-50L Voicemail questions

I have and occasionally use the ESI admin program to view and make minor changes to our 50L. Apparently our voicemail system is full (I did not know this), and is having some occasional issues with garbling the messages and recordings.
I run the ESI system programmer v1.2.13.1.
When I run F74 Voice Mail Statistics Report, on page 2 it shows
Total Message
& Recording Usage: 20:20:26
Available Message Storage: 0:00:00
IS it normal for the users to have no clue that the system is full? Why would a full system garble messages? Most people get pieces of each others recordings or voicemail. I have been asked several times why we ever got this phone system. That normally means "never buy that brand again". Our old IVX 20 Plus seem to be much more reliable (just needed to expand beyond its reach). We have many frustrated phone users.
Any help would be appreciated.

you may have one phone that someone hit the record button and left it record several hours in to it's mail box

I know exactly when, where, and who recorded all the very long recordings. That person now has the VIP basic program to download the recordings to his computer, before they become corrupted (which they will). I find it strange that is acceptable of a voicemail system, especially a newer one. As the computer tech here, I do what I can to ensure that our computer files do not become lost or corrupted. Why should we consider voicemail or recordings any less. Also I can easily see when disk space is low. I am still unsure we have no more space in the voicemail system. My installer suggests adding more storage as the solution.
To me this is like throwing more ram at a bad program until the problem goes away (and keep using the program - with all its problems).

Gene, The ESI 50L comes out of the box as a 2 port x 15 hour Voice Storage. It can be upgraded to a 4 Port x 30 Hour and if that's not enough then you can upgrade from the 2 x 15 to a 6 Port x 30 Hour of Voice Storage.
Keep in mind that Voice Storage includes all recordings in the Auto Attendant, Voicemail greetings, Music on Hold recordings, and Call Recordings or Memo Recordings in addtion to all the messages left in mailboxes and that each Mailbox has a Recycle Bin which by default keeps the last 10 deleted voice messages.
So one thing to teach/instruct all employees to do is to clean out their Recycle Bins by deleting all those messages.
Good Luck and hope this may help out somewhat for you.

If you have someone who needs to archive recordings you should have an ASC card on your system and the mobile messaging option. VIP will save recordings, but it is not meant for routine storage, as it streams in real time from the maintenance port and can take a while to save a file (like 10 minutes for a 10 minute recording). WIth mobile messaging everything can get sent to an e-mail address in seconds and you have a permanent record. If you have filled up 20 hours of storage on your ESI50L you are a high volume user and there is no question you should have mobile messaging. I rarely see more than 20% usage. By the way it sounds like you may have a bad flash card. ESI might replace it even out of warranty if your reseller is in good standing.

I can understand (and accept) a hardware defect causing this problem. What I can't understand (or accept) is if the corruption of recordings and/or voicemail because the system is full, is normal. Hardware damage / defects cannot really be controlled. The programmers can control the programming. There should be a simple way for the person designated at the client site (me) to check up on the status of (is it full), even on a 50L. Its amazing that the old ESI system from around 2001 never had any problems, it just could not hold as many phone extensions as we needed for the new place. I will look into expansions and mobile messaging.
Thank you for answering this end-users questions.

If you want to keep voice mails, maybe you should be looking at the call logging available in the full 50 system.