How to Input Names in Merlin Voicemail’s Dial By Name Directory

If you have an old AT&T Merlin/Partner Mail voice mail system and you want to set up dial by name, you’ll need to manually set them up (if you don’t have a laptop with the software needed to do it via computer).  Here are some tips to help you do it.

How to Input Names in Merlin Voicemail’s Dial By Name Directory

Hardware:

• Avaya Merlin BIS-10 Phone Handset

I have written a handful of tutorials on the Merlin Mail and Avaya phone system:

• How to Connect an Analog Conference Phone to a Merlin Legend Phone System
• How to Transfer a Voicemail Message in Merlin Mail
• How to Program a Forward Button on an Avaya BIS-10 Phone
• How to Check Merlin Mail From an Outside Phone
• How to Input Names in Merlin Voicemail’s Dial By Name Directory (this post)
• How to Program a Direct Voice Mail Button on an Avaya BIS-10 Phone

To modify a mailbox name, get into your Voice Mail Service, press 4 for “Mail Boxes”, press 6 to “Modify a Mailbox”, and then 1 to “Modify Name.”

To enter the names you must use the phone keypad.  Unfortunately there isn’t a key for each letter–so how do you differentiate between an A and a B because they are both on the number 2 key?

Keypad on an old Avaya Phone

They way they decided to handle it was for you to press the key that has the letter on it you want and then to follow that up with either pressing the 1, 2, or 3, signifying whether the letter you want is the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd letter on the key.  So for a C you press 23 (the C is on the 2 key and the C is the third letter on that key, ABC), a J you press 51, and a H you press 42.  For the two letters that are not on the keypad, the Q and Z, they have you press the key it should be on and then 4.  I typed up a cheat sheet which can be handy to refer to:

Numerical Codes “Cheat Sheet” for entering letters in Merlin Mail

If I am entering a whole phone system’s worth of names I go ahead and figure out all the names (as numbers) ahead of time so I can just fly through it.  I can do it by just looking at the keys but it’s just a lot more peaceful having it all laid out for me, for example, I would type out:

John Smith 73 61 43 81 42
Mike Davis 31 21 83 43 73
John Misner 61 43 73 62 32 72

Note: If you have two people with the same last name, when someone enters those characters it will ask the person which of the two people they want, so go ahead and enter each name the same.