With the new IP Office release 10.1 Avaya added a new feature called ‘Multiple Appearance Directory Number’ or short ‘MADN’ to address some customer requests. While there had been the need to be reachable under more than one single number you had to find workarounds to manage that.
The challenge
You had the opportunity to place one (ore more) cheap digital or IP phone in the data center and create bridged appearance keys for that phone. It was also possible to create a hunt group for the additional numbers. The hunt group solution had some disadvantages. Enabling call forwarding or DND (do not disturb) disabled the user’s membership within the group and the user wasn’t reachable anymore. The only way a user could be reached anyway was to dial a short code using the function ‘Dial extension by number’. That works as long as the user doesn’t use hot desking because the function does not call the logged in user but the phone itself.
So we want to be able to call a user through an extra number even if his phone is forwarded or he is in a call. I had a use case where an alarm server had to call the user to play an important voice message in case of a technical issue or in different alarm scenarios like fire or violence. It is important that the alarm server is able to call the user even if his phone is not available for any reason.
The implementation
Implementing MADN is not that difficult. First you have to create a phantom user. There is no extension needed, so you will either need no further license for that user. You can also decide how many calls that phantom user can get by configuring call appearance buttons as for every other user.
Next you have to configure MADN buttons for the user who should get the calls. You have to decide whether you want to configure ‘MADN Single Appearance’ or ‘MADN Multiple Appearance’. While with ‘MADN Single Appearance’ each button on the target user’s phone represents a single call appearance of the virtual user with ‘MADN Multiple Appearance’ one single button reflects the state of the virtual user. Depending on the number of phones where the ‘MADN Multiple Appearance’ is configured the behavior can be different. If only one user has the button configured a second call to the virtual user will give either a busy to the caller or will lead the call in the virtual user’s voicemail box. If more users have that MADN button the virtual user can get as many calls as users with the button are available.
Our use case is to ensure the reachability of a user in case of an alarm call initiated by an alarm server. In earlier releases that had been difficult because it was usually not possible to call a busy user. To make the target users available though, we create phantom users for all users that we have to reach. It is a good option to use extensions for the virtual users that match the user’s original extension but with a prefix. For example if there is a user 1234 I would create a user 881234 as virtual user.
Next we have to put the buttons on the real user’s phones. In this example it doesn’t matter if we use either ‘MADN Single Appearance’ or ‘MADN Multiple Appearance’ because every virtual user is bound to only one real user. In the button programming we can decide whether an incoming call should be only visible, should ring delayed or should ring normal. You can also configure if the phone should ring only short or normal. In our scenario immediate ring without stopping (not a short ring) is the best option.
The last thing to do is to let the alarm server call the virtual user 881234. Regardless if the target user 1234 is on a call, has call forwarding or DND enabled a call to 881234 will always ring the phone and the real user can answer that call in case of an alarm scenario.
Conclusion
MADN gives us the opportunity to cover different use cases. You can create a private DID for some users like the boss. Or you can ensure reachability of a user in special cases.
You don’t have to create phantom users and extensions with a connected phone for private DIDs. You will not reach the limit of 300 configured hunt groups because you configured groups for special purposes.
You can say that MADN is a small feature and it can help us to cover different call scenarios pretty easy without the need to pay for licenses or extensions or to create hunt groups and reach the ‘max 300 groups’ limit.
Feel free to add some comments or leave a reply. Perhaps you already figured out other scenarios where MADN helps you or where you hoped it helped you but didn’t.
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