Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Digital Answering Machine

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Posted by Dean Craig (Member # 2085) on 03-07-2012, 11:59 AM:

Hello all I was wanting to know what do you all use for a digital answering machine, all I’m looking for is it to announce, don’t need it to take messages. We had a Smart DASA 300, but it died. Any suggestions…

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 03-07-2012, 01:15 PM:

I used to have an answering machine on my "movie hotline" number but a few years ago I switched my telephone service from the telephone company to the cable company and they include voicemail with the service at no extra cost. So now I don't have any answering machines at all.

When I had one, it was one of the $24.95 specials from the local hardware store, usually a GE brand as I recall.

However: I do some computer consulting as a sideline and several years ago I set up a custom multi-line answering machine fax machine for a business that, among other things, sorts their incoming voice messages and faxes and archives and emails them to various departments as needed. I've always thought that something similar to this would be useful for my theatre too, where you could press 1 for what's playing, 2 for admission prices and so on. But since I have "free" voicemail it's not currently worthwhile to set up.

However, if you want to look at a solution like this there are two options, depending on how many features you want the system to have. If you just want the basic answering machine, look at mgetty/vgetty. If you want a more full-features setup, lookk at Asterisk.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 03-07-2012, 04:16 PM:

We use Interalia DMU that are made I believe in calgary and they are expandable

Posted by Philip Jones (Member # 6677) on 03-08-2012, 09:47 AM:

We're looking for something similar.

Ideally we want it to be able to have 3 options.

Press 1 for this week's showtimes
Press 2 for next week's showtimes
Press 3 to speak to someone personally.

Then if option 3 is pressed but no one is available to take the call it would go to a further message saying "No one is currently available to take your call, please try again later".

I'm in the UK, if anyone knows of any answerphone that does this it'd be great.

Posted by Andy Frodsham (Member # 4061) on 03-08-2012, 10:22 AM:

Try the 'Retell' range of answering machines available from a considerable number of office equipment suppliers in the UK.

Google the name!

Posted by Dominic Espinosa (Member # 2122) on 03-24-2012, 02:39 PM:

If you have a managed VOIP system you could get this from your provider as a service.
We used auto-attendants chained together to get similar functionality.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 03-26-2012, 09:28 PM:

Still have several Smart machines like yours. Louis

Posted by Michael Voiland (Member # 5386) on 03-30-2012, 09:43 PM:

Grasshopper provides a virtual pbx all managed online.

Posted by Timothy Eiler (Member # 383) on 04-18-2012, 07:17 AM:

We use a old windows 95 computer with a voice mail box software that has unlimited outgoing message time and has the capability of multiple mail boxes