How to check VICIdial voicemail by phone

You have a voicemail box collecting messages, and now you actually want to hear them from a handset instead of staring at a count in the admin screen. The phone-based check is the classic Asterisk-style flow: call a feature extension, punch in the box number and the password, and a voice menu walks you through the messages one at a time.

This works the same whether the box belongs to a single phone or it is a general box you created by hand. The only thing you need before you start is the voicemail ID of the box and its password. If you are still setting that up, the voicemail ID and password walkthrough covers the rules for each field.

Dialing in and logging in

From a registered Hardphone (deskphone) or Softphone on the system, dial the voicemail-check feature code your dialplan exposes (often *97 for the box tied to the calling phone, or *98 to reach any box by number). The system answers and prompts you for two things in order:

1. The mailbox number — the all-numeric ID of the box you want to open.
2. The password — the access code you set on the box record (up to 10 digits).

The password is the only thing standing between a caller and the recorded messages, so treat it like a SIP peer secret and keep it off shared notes. If the box is marked inactive, you will not get in at all — an inactive box blocks both leaving and checking messages, which is a handy way to freeze a box without deleting it.

The message menu

Once you are in, the standard voice menu plays. It separates what you have already heard from what you have not, and gives you DTMF keys to act on each message. The most-used keys are listed below; your exact prompts depend on the Asterisk voicemail build, but the shape is consistent.

• Press 1 to listen to new messages first.
• Press 2 to change folders (new vs old/saved).
• During playback: 5 to repeat, 6 to skip to the next, 7 to delete, 9 to save.

The split between unheard and saved is worth understanding on its own — see new vs old messages for how the box moves a message from one folder to the other the moment you listen to it.

The call flow at a glance

sequenceDiagram
  participant Phone
  participant System as VICIdial
  participant Box as Voicemail Box
  Phone->>System: Dial check feature code
  System->>Phone: Ask for mailbox number
  Phone->>System: Enter box ID
  System->>Phone: Ask for password
  Phone->>Box: Submit password
  Box->>Phone: Play new message menu
  Phone->>Box: Listen / save / delete keys

If you would rather messages land in your inbox than make you dial in every time, you can route them out by email instead — the voicemail-to-email setup turns each new message into an attachment. For the wider picture of how voicemail fits next to recordings, TTS (text to speech) prompts, and the audio store, the audio prompts and voicemail guide ties it together.

Checking voicemail by phone is a five-minute habit, but only if the box, the registrations, and the dialplan are already wired up correctly on a healthy server. If you would rather skip the build, you can spin up a ready VICIdial server in under 40 seconds — see pricing.