First of all I am an Inter-Tel dealer. Don't hold that against me please. I recently replaced two Samsung systems for the same customer. They had a real old 256 and a newer digital system with a "Starmail" attached (I think, about a month back since I did this). When we went through the bid process they wanted a solution to "Automatically" record phone calls. Well, to make a long story short the consultant got it wrong and we can manually record calls with Record A Call. Anyway, in talking to the customer today they say that the "old" system (I assume the one with the StarMail) was recording the phone calls into a mailbox automatically. So my question to all of you that work on these systems is "Is this possible?" Or could they have been using some slight of hand to enter a feature code to record the call and not told them?

Thanks for any comments.

The Starmail was not capable of doing this.You can do it with the newer voicemails but it is not recommended.They are not designed to do call logging like that.The 256 is even older analog system.
Are yo sure there wan't an outboard call logger on the phone lines?

I took all the equipment off the wall, just the three boxes. Unless they had a call logger somewhere else on the premise. Could it be housed in a PC? I wasn't able to talk to the guy who administered the recorder. They did say that he had to listen to the messages regularly or it would fill up and quit recording.

The real old system was probably a 56/120 and a StarMail would have been sold with that.

There was no provision on the StarMail to record every call.

However if they had a newer digital system, they could have had a Cadence voicemail with that and it was a normal function to use one or more channels to record all the calls off one extension. And if you did not clear them out, you would bring the Cadence up to its capacity and it would crash.

You can record all the conversations on an extension with newer SMVI voicemails. Each extension takes one channel of the voicemail.

Cadence had up to 8 channels if there were two VPM boards, SMVI-4s had 2 or 4 channels, etc.

If you must go to an automatic recording system look at Trivium Systems Sonicview. It works with both the Samsung and Inter-tel/Mitel. Digital phone integration no problem. Simple learning curve for a tech and the end user.

https://www.triviumsys.com/html/products/sonic_view.html

What Samsung did you install for them, a 7000 series or a 100/500 series?

Noisycow has a good source but if you only need to record one extension for training you should be able to use the Samsung voicemail. No extra hardware to buy.

If you wanted to record any call from many stations then Noisycow's suggestion would be really good.

I think he meant he replaced the Samsung with an Inter-tel/Mitel, maybe a 5000. The Record-A-Call functionality is the same as the Samsung's record (button) feature. The Samsung also allows you to preset/auto recording of inc/out/both of a station's calls. The Inter-Tel doesn't do that; at least not without extra hardware.

BTW - the auto record feature of the newer Samsungs is a HOT seller. Especially for business owners that periodically want to check how their receptionist is handling calls.

Ahh, rereading the original post, I thought he had put in two Samsungs but probably not.

I will be 64 next week and there are more and more times I miss the things others catch. Thanks, Bunnie

Yup I did use a 5000 to replace BOTH systems. It was wierd, the original company had installed the larger system for 25 phones and the DCS 50i (I think) for 5 phones in the dispatch room. Somehow they shared the Starmail. I didn't pay that much attention as I had to do the cut all in one day. Anyway thanks for the help guys!