I have a 3300 ICP and need the phones connected to it to have a "line 1 and line 2" appearance. Right now a phone may be primarily known as ext. 1420 but have another key as ext. 2420 for line two. This allows them to dial out on either line. Today we have a voice mail system that allows me to write scripts that allows calls to both lines to go to the same mailbox. It's a terrible VM system and I want to convert to the embedded Mitel VM system.

At my other job we had an Avaya system that would ring the second appearance if line one was busy and then go to voicemail. Both lines also shared the same mailbox. I find it odd that its so hard associate a "PHONE" with one mailbox since they are intended to be multiline. I suspect its just my approach or ignorance....Thanks for any help!!

If you re-rte 1420 first to 2420 on a busy and second to v/m on busy/n/a, when the call routes to v/m, it will the carry the ID of 1420. No one ever needs to be given the 2420 extension number. As long as they dial 1420 the call will route to 2420 if 1420 is busy, and to v/m when either not answered or if both lines are busy.

Thanks. I think this company was allowed to propagate a bad practice by giving out their second line.

Policy changes are in my future.

You could potentially make the second numbers sys speed calls to their primary ext numbers, and change their second numbers to new numbers that they wouldn't give out (like *1420 or 3420). Eventually when people weren't dialing the "old" second numbers anymore you could delete sys speed calls.

Question - do they answer the phone differently depending on which line is ringing?

Not really, some of them my be in an ACD queue and may answer differently depending on what the display reads. Before my time here, they got into the habit of giving their customers the second line extension. Since there wasn't anybody here to enforce good PBX/phone practices (and since the external VM system is scriptable), their behavior was just adapted to. I always thought it was odd that phones were labeled with two extensions on the buttons instead of labeled with one extension and "line 1 and line 2" buttons. I think it would be nice to be able to assign a "phone" to a mailbox but that's probably just because of the situation I am in now.