Using a VICIdial voicemail box as a message drop

Every phone on a VICIdial system already has its own voicemail box, but that is not usually what you want for inbound calls. What you want is a shared box — one place where messages from a particular number or menu option pile up, ready for someone to clear. In VICIdial that is a general voicemail box, and the most common reason to create one is exactly this: a message drop from one DID (direct inward dialing) or Call menu.

A message drop is just a voicemail box that calls get routed into instead of an agent. The caller hears a greeting, leaves their details, and the recording lands in the box as a new message. Nobody has to be sitting at a phone for it to work, which is the whole point. The difference from a per-phone box is who owns it: a phone box belongs to one seat, while a general box belongs to a number or a menu, so several people can share the job of clearing it.

Creating the general box

Add the box from the admin voicemail screen. A valid record only needs five fields, and two of them are non-negotiable: the all-numeric ID and the password. The ID must be unique — it cannot collide with another box or with the auto-created box of a phone — and it must be digits only, no spaces or punctuation. The add a voicemail box walkthrough covers each field in order.

• Voicemail ID — digits only, minimum 2 characters, unique across boxes and phones.
• Password — used to gain access when checking the box by phone.
• Name — what shows in the list and on the summary screen.
• Email (optional) — send each message out as it arrives.
• Active — must be on, or the box rejects new messages.

Pointing calls at it

Once the box exists, the routing happens elsewhere. You set a DID (direct inward dialing) or a Call menu option to drop into this voicemail ID instead of handing off to an Ingroup of agents. From the caller's side it is one continuous flow: ring, greeting, beep, record, hang up. The box does not need anyone watching it for this to fire — that is exactly why it works for a number you publish for callbacks or a line that runs unattended overnight.

flowchart TD
  A["Inbound call on DID"] --> B["Call Menu or direct route"]
  B --> C{"Route target?"}
  C -->|Agents| D["Ingroup queue"]
  C -->|Drop box| E["General voicemail box"]
  E --> F["Play greeting + beep"]
  F --> G["Record message"]
  G --> H["New message count +1"]

The greeting the caller hears can be a custom audio file from the audio store rather than the default system message — handy for branding or for stating your callback hours. For the routing details, routing a DID or call menu to voicemail covers where the target gets set.

Clearing the drop box

A drop box is only useful if someone empties it. Turn on the summary display so the new count is visible to whoever logs in, dial in to listen, or have messages emailed out automatically. The wider picture of how this fits with greetings, TTS (text to speech) prompts, and recordings lives in the audio prompts and voicemail guide.

A message drop is one of the first things most new deployments set up, so it pays to start on a server where voicemail, routing, and audio are already in place. You can have a ready VICIdial box running in under 40 seconds — see pricing.