Sending a DID straight to voicemail

Not every number you own needs to ring an agent. An after-hours line, an overflow number, or a dedicated message line can go straight to voicemail instead. In VICIdial you do this on the DID (direct inward dialing) itself, which is the inbound number your carrier points at your system.

Every DID has a DID Route that decides where its calls go. The choices include sending the call to an extension, to an agent, to a phone, to an Ingroup, to a Call menu, or to voicemail. The default route is EXTEN, so to use voicemail you change it.

The fields you need to set

1. Set DID Route to VOICEMAIL. This sends calls directly to the voicemail box you name below.
2. Fill in the Voicemail Box field with the box number that should receive the calls. It is empty by default.
3. Set the Extension Context to default. For VOICEMAIL to work properly, this context needs to be default.

With or without instructions

There are two voicemail routes. VOICEMAIL plays the box's unavailable greeting and then the usual instructions about leaving a message after the tone. VMAIL_NO_INST does the same thing but skips those instructions, so the caller hears your greeting and goes straight to the beep. Pick VMAIL_NO_INST when your own greeting already tells the caller what to do.

How the call reaches the box

flowchart LR
  A[Carrier sends call to DID] --> B{DID Route}
  B -->|EXTEN| C[Dialplan extension]
  B -->|IN_GROUP| D[Queue and agents]
  B -->|VOICEMAIL| E[Box plays greeting plus instructions]
  B -->|VMAIL_NO_INST| F[Box plays greeting only]
  E --> G[Caller leaves message]
  F --> G

A DID can also be routed to a call menu first, so callers can choose between an agent and voicemail. That is a common after-hours pattern. To understand all the routing choices and how a Status (lead status) is recorded on each call, read the inbound call handling guide. If you want calls to ring agents instead, see how to create an inbound group that takes calls.

Voicemail boxes and contexts are exactly the kind of detail that is easy to misconfigure on a hand-built server. Our managed VICIdial hosting gives you a working box in under a minute with voicemail already wired, so pointing a DID at a box is a two-field change.