Set voicemail greetings and PINs for each mailbox

Choose what a caller hears at each mailbox and control who can open it, across extension, call-group, and company voicemail.

A mailbox has two settings that matter to the people using it: the greeting a caller hears, and the PIN that lets someone open it from a phone. The phone system has three kinds of mailbox — one per extension, one per call group, and one for the company — and they are not configured in the same place. Some settings live in the dashboard, some are only reachable by dialing in, and the table below is the shortest way to find the one you need.

Where each setting lives

Extensions and call groups are under Settings > Call Setup; System Details is at the top of Settings. “By phone” means the dial-in menu covered in Check and manage voicemail from a phone.

Two gaps in that table are deliberate and worth knowing before you go looking:

• An extension greeting cannot be chosen in the dashboard. The extension editor carries the PIN but no greeting picker, so a personal greeting is always recorded on the handset.
• A call-group PIN cannot be changed in the dashboard. Change it from the group’s own mailbox on key 9.

Prerequisites

• The intended phone system selected in the header.
• An administrator role to edit System Details. Extension and call-group edits follow the permissions for those pages.
• For a greeting chosen from a picker: the audio already in the media library, or ready to upload.

Choose a greeting from the media library

Call-group and company greetings are picked from the phone system’s media library rather than uploaded into the mailbox itself. That means one recording can serve several mailboxes, and you can preview it before committing.

1. Open the mailbox’s settings — Call Groups > edit the group, or System Details > Company Voicemail.
2. Open the greeting picker. Before anything is chosen it reads Choose a library item….
3. Pick an item. The list is filtered to voicemail-greeting audio, and items curated by Steer Phones for every phone system are marked as shared.
4. Use the preview control to hear it before you save.
5. If the audio does not exist yet, use Upload new… in the picker to add it without leaving the form, or build it first in the media library.
6. Save the form.

The picker has no “none” entry, so a greeting cannot be cleared back to the default from these forms once one has been chosen. Point the mailbox at different audio instead.

Record a greeting in your own voice

This is the only route for an extension greeting, and an alternative for a call group.

1. From a handset, dial *97 for your own extension mailbox, or *97 followed by the group number for a call group.
2. Enter the mailbox PIN.
3. Press 8.
4. Record after the beep and press # when finished. Recording is capped at about a minute.
5. The system confirms the greeting has been saved and returns you to the menu.

A greeting recorded for a call group is also promoted into that phone system’s media library, so it shows up in the picker afterwards and can be reused. An extension greeting stays with the extension.

What a caller hears

When a mailbox has a greeting, the caller hears it and then the beep. When it does not, the system speaks a default prompt instead — Please leave a message after the beep. Press the pound key when finished. — so a mailbox without a greeting still takes messages.

Recording stops when the caller presses #, after a stretch of silence, or when the message reaches its maximum length. Those two limits are managed by Steer Phones rather than set per phone system. A caller who hangs up at the beep leaves no message at all: a recording of barely a second is discarded rather than filed as an empty voicemail.

Set or change a PIN

A voicemail PIN is four to six digits. It is stored hashed, so no surface — the dashboard, the API, or support — can read an existing PIN back to you. Treat it as a credential: do not put it in a ticket, in documentation feedback, or in an assistant conversation.

For an extension, open Extensions, edit the extension, and use the Voicemail PIN field. The field is masked and accepts digits only. On an existing extension it is pre-set to Leave blank to keep existing — leaving it empty makes no change, so you only ever type in it when you intend to replace the PIN. A value that is not four to six digits is rejected before saving with Voicemail PIN must be 4–6 digits.

For the company mailbox, open System Details > Company Voicemail. The Company Voicemail PIN field shows a status banner above it: either that a PIN is configured, or that the mailbox is still on the shared starting PIN. Treat the second state as an open mailbox and set your own. Typing fewer than four digits is treated as no change rather than an error, and leaving the field empty keeps the current PIN. The section also offers a reset control that puts the mailbox back on the shared starting PIN; it asks for confirmation first and warns that anyone who knows that PIN will be able to reach the company mailbox.

For a call group, and as an alternative for an extension, change the PIN from the dial-in menu on key 9. That flow asks for the current PIN first, then the new PIN twice.

Expected result

Callers reaching the mailbox hear the audio you selected or recorded, the greeting picker shows that item’s title on the form, and the PIN you set opens the mailbox from a handset on the next call. The company PIN banner reports that a PIN is configured.

Troubleshooting

• The greeting picker is empty: No voicemail-greeting audio exists for this phone system yet. Add or generate an item in the media library, or upload one from inside the picker.
• A greeting was recorded by phone but the picker still shows the old item: Reload the form. Phone-recorded call-group greetings are added to the library before they are linked, so the new item appears under its own name.
• You cannot find a greeting field on an extension: There is not one. Record the greeting from the handset.
• You cannot find a PIN field on a call group: There is not one. Change it from the group mailbox on key 9.
• System Details is read-only: Editing it requires an administrator role. The form says so in its footer.
• A caller still hears the old greeting: The change applies to calls that start after it is saved. Confirm the intended phone system was selected, then place a fresh test call.

Related guidance

• Check and manage voicemail from a phone.
• Review and manage voicemail messages.
• Manage greetings and audio in the media library.
• Configure system details.
• Create and manage extensions.
• Create call groups and call menus.