Voice Mail Systems (VMS)

Voicemail is an increasingly used system for storing telephone messages for a large group people. Voice mail is a very important system for busy individuals who cannot collect their calls every time. The advent of voicemail came about due to the need of corporates and bigger companies to have an economical and simple method to store telephone messages for their employees. The simple answering machines were not viable because that would need one answering machine per telephone.

When a person calls another on their cellphone, and if the dialed person is busy, the voice mail message service is activated. The caller can then store their voicemail message, in what is called a 'voice mail inbox'. Voice mail services have the ability to make a call to a telephone or a cellphone to inform the user that they have a 'voicemail message'. The dialed person can then retrieve these messages from their inbox at a later time, by clearing some simple, pre-determined security procedures, commonly a password.

Voicemail systems (VMS) may be available with residential phone networks, however they are a standard network feature with most cellular networks. Today, voice mail systems are most commonly associated with office telephone networks and Private Branch Exchanges.

Voice mail uses a telephone machine for its user interface, and is connected to a central computer system. Voice mail systems can answer many phones at the same time. They also enable users to forward messages to another voice mailbox. Further, voice mail stores incoming voice messages in private and personalized mailboxes, which are generally associated with the user's phone number. Voice mail services also allows its users to forward the received messages to another voice mailbox.

Voice mail services also allow the user to send messages to one or more voice mailboxes. Like answering machines, voice mail services allow the use to greet the caller with a personalized message. It also allows the user to add a voice introduction to a forwarded message. It also allows the user to play different greeting messages to different callers. This can be done by simply feeding and registering the said numbers into the voice mail inbox.

Voicemail systems consist of a central processing unit (CPU), the software and a program. The program gives the look and feel to the voicemail system. It is this software that consists the various prompts and commands that make up the crux of the voice mail system. Voice mail systems also consists of disk controllers and many disks to store the messages in. Voicemail systems also have system disks which contain data pertaining to the entire working of the system, including pointers to each of the messages that are stored on the disk drives.

Voice mail messaging systems may be seen as a 'technical toy' by some, but it has been a boon for corporates. Voice mail messaging single-handedly solved the communication problems in the corporate world. Previously, many messages were lost due to the messages being stored either manually. A few years ago, there was a huge loss of productivity because of individuals not being able to contact individuals. This was mainly because of the decrease of the ratio of secretaries to employees. Some studies showed that almost one in four phone calls did not require a conversation and was simply a message of either work done, or work about to start.

Voice mail enables people to leave detailed and long secure messages across the world. Voice mail also systemized the flow of communications in corporates as well as saved a lot of money in terms of communication and basically getting the job done. Separate surveys have noted that companies can save up to a thousand dollars per employee per year with the use of voice mail messaging systems.