sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Inter-Tel Telephones & Systems auto attendant doesnt answer sometimes?

We have a sporadic problem with our inter-tel system. Sometimes (1 or 2 times a week) the system auto attendant just stops answering calls. If you call in, the system just rings (although no phones are ringing in the office). Voicemail also does not work when this happens. We have to reboot the evmc card and then the system runs just fine for a day or two or a week, till it happens again? Help, anyone have any ideas. My installation company seems to really try to fix it, but they are pretty stumped.

Well, it sounds like yer EVMC is failing. First off it needs to be on the highest s/w release available for yer version. If it is, it is most likely that the hardrive is failing. I have a disk utility that I boot the EVMC to, then run scandisk and defrag. Sometimes this will fix you up, sometimes not. If the hardrive is a Toshiba drive, you are probably looking at a new drive.

Second most likely is that the hardrive mounting standoffs are of the old soft rubber kind, there is a field replacement kit for those and they will cause the symptoms you are experiencing.

Third most likely is the cooling fan is failing and vibrating the crap out of the motherboard and drive. Usually you can hear the fan failing as the bearings make quite a racket. There is also a field replaceable kit for that as well.

Reply w/ yer s/w version if you know it as a starting point...

We had this problem too with a voice mail computer. People would call in and the phone would just ring and ring, no pick-up. A few seconds later you could call in and get the auto attendant, no problem. We found out that even though no one was 'calling in or out', people were accessing the voice mail at these times, and the ports on our card were being overloaded. We moved up to a higher port limit, (from a four to an eight) and the problem went away.

Another cause for this is that the physical electrical connection for all of the ports might have a problem. I have encountered numerous situations similar to yours where say, the second port's RJ11 connection has failed. The first call hitting the system goes trough fine, but the second (or whatever port) doesn't answer causing endless ringing. You might want to try dialing each individual extension number for each port to ensure that each of them answers. If you find one that doesn't, it's probably something simple like a poorly-installed modular plug for that port's connection to the system.

That's just my 200 words' worth!

That is excellent advice when using a 3rd party voicemail, but in Inter-Tel land, you cannot really dial each port to test as they are allocated via a serial interface (in the case of an EVMC anyway). It is far more likely the the EVMC itself is having a H/W problem.

Now it is possible that the VM is overwhelmed w/ calls, but that symptom is usually well represented by the VM light going on and off at quick, regular intervals. Hopefully the original poster will get us an update...