Pickup Group

[vkd]

We just starting with 3CX and testing it/comparing it with other systems, we found that:

If a phone is ringing, it is possible to answer this call from another phone (call pickup), either by specifying the phone which is ringing (9100<Nr>), or by a general pickup (9100).

For this general pick you normally will pickup first call that took place if there are more than 1 calls ringing at the same time.

But if you have a larger company you want only to pickup the phones which belong to your department of the company. So you would need to define Pickup groups.

Currently it is not possible. Please add this in the next release.

Regards,
Bareld

[zensoftware]

Pickup groups would be good as these are pretty standard in most phone systems.

If you have a phone with function keys, like the Snom it's possible to do this already by coding the pickup option into the function key.

Regards,

Emmet.

[pjr]

This is a *Cruicial* requirement for us.

We recently had an implementation where we lost a sale because we could not offer pickup groups that worked in the same manner as an existing Mitel system - this was a feature that they relied on in their environment due to the layout of the office. It was not 3CX that we were offering at the time, and 3CX offers much more that that system, but still does not offer what is in my opinion a good implementation of pickup groups.

The options as I see them at present in V8 are:

Individual Ringing Call Pickup = *20*+ extn - requires user to know the extension thats ringing, which can be looked up via 3CX Asst (if the user has the rights to view the status of the ringing extn) but is more cumbersome than a single button press and requires the user to change behaviour.

Group Ringing Pickup = *20*+ ring group number - great if the person attempting to pickup knows/remembers/learns the ring group number of the phones nearest them - again this is a change in user behaviour and as we know users *hate* change

First Ringing call pickup *20* and dial - great for small environments but in larger implementations this can cause problems. For example - head office has 3CX server installed and VPNs to remote offices. Female user in remote office hears phone ring across the office and uses feature code *20* to pickup the call. They will be unaware that the CEO's direct line was ringing with a call from his wife before the call started ringing in their remote office. The female user in the remote office then answers the call but it's the CEOs wife trying to reach him. Now the end user in the remote office is confused and the CEO may have some explaining to do! I know this is a worst possible case but there are plenty of other risks associated with this feature code.

All I want is to be able to assign groups of extensions that are within proximity of one another to a single pickup group (not ring group), and allow users in these areas to dial a feature code + the pickup group number to pickup the first ringing call from any of that group of extensions. This is not much of a departure from the *20* feature but limits the scope of the extensions to a particular group of extensions, instead of all extensions.

Thanks
Paul

[KerryG]

There is already a groups function that could be expanded to allow things like group pickup, group paging, group intercom, and group voicemail. One of the things that would need to be changed would be that an extension should be able to belong to multiple groups.

[LeonidasG]

To make this better to understand, what you are saying is:

Example:
1) Have 3 Pickup Groups that have for example 3 inside extensions each one.

2) Incoming Call from a Customer to Pickup Group #2

3) Employee in Pickup Group #1 who does not have an assistant vaguely knows that the phone that is ringing is coming from Group #2

4) He calls the Pickup Group #2 and Automatically Answers the Call.




Is this what you are talking about? If not can you make your explanation a bit simpler?

[pjr]

This is from Avayas site

A pickup group is a list of phones where each member of the group can answer another member's calls. For example, if you want everyone on one floor of an office to be able to answer calls to any extension on that floor (in case someone is away from their desk), create a pickup group that contains all of the floors extensions. Members of a pickup group should be located in the same area so that they can hear ringing at the other extensions in the group. Note that each extension may belong to only one pickup group.

My Explanation

The end user would simply dial a feature code (which could be programmed as a speed dial) to pickup any ringing phone on their floor. This differs from using *20* + ring group as the end user doesnt need to know/lookup or think about the ring group code (as the other extensions on their floor may not even be in the same ring group) - they just dial a single code to pickup a ringing phone near them.

EG - Floor One in an open plan office has Accounts and Sales which each have their own ring group (100-Sales and 200-Accounts).

After hours people in Accounts wish to pickup calls ringing in sales, but from their location they cannot determine if the phone ringing across the other side of the office is a sale or accounts phone. In this scenario with the existing 3CX functionality, they would have to lookup the ring group number for Sales and then dial *20*+100 to answer the call, but it may not be a sales call and they would then have to look up the Accounts ring group number and redial *20*+200 to answer the call. This is a lot of effort on the users part to answer a call that isn't even for them - so they wont use it.

The other optioin the user has would be to dial *20* and dial in order to pickup the ringing call - but this carries a risk (in a large company) of the user picking up a call that came into the system before the call they are trying to answer, and is ringing in a different part of the building - result = end user picks up a call they dont know how to deal with or dont wish to deal with.

The solution is a pickup group - if all sales and accounts phones are in a single pickup group due to their physical proximity to one another, the after hours accounts user only has to dial the relevant feature code plus the pickup group number to pickup any call ringing on their floor - this is how a lot of systems do it (Mitel, Avaya, Asterisk, Cisco) and it should be possible in 3CX.

Paul

[LeonidasG]

I see, i didnt know big players like Cisco had a feature like this.

What's also hard to understand is how they configure it...
If there are 2 Incoming calls to the same Group? You cant just use your SpeedDial and Randomly pickup one... Or can you?
And what if the call is a personal call and you answer it?

How does Cisco deal with these kind of scenarios?

[pjr]

If there are 2 Incoming calls to the same Group? You cant just use your SpeedDial and Randomly pickup one... Or can you?
And what if the call is a personal call and you answer it?

If there are 2 incoming calls I imagine the first ringing one would get answered? (I dont have first hand experience of how cisco implement this but they list it on their website - http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/ ... 4380.shtml)

If the call is personal I guess thats an accepted risk or you just leave out VIP staff members from the pickup group?

Existing 3CX functionality has no mechanism to stop anyone from using the pickup feature code to pickup anyone elses phones (ie can't restrict certain extensions from being answered via feature code) which is a bigger risk anyway, surely?

Paul

[LeonidasG]

You can Dial *20* without the Ext Number at the end to Answer a Ringing Phone, but any advanced options to specify WHICH Specific extensions you are allowed to answer do not exist at the moment.

I think it's gonna be a good feature for a future version, maybe V9 possibly.

[jcasares]

It would be nice that pickup can follow groups/queues/ring groups. When you are in different buildings and split in functions is not quite nice to get a phone call from another department.

[pjr]

Any further news on this?

We have had 2 implementations recently and both have requested this

Paul

[Powermage]

Use a phone with an programmable button,
just hardcode one group pickup code in the field and the user can pickup the specific group. your limitation is the user can have only one pickupgroup, but you have made an step forward.

[pjr]

Use a phone with an programmable button,
just hardcode one group pickup code in the field and the user can pickup the specific group. your limitation is the user can have only one pickupgroup, but you have made an step forward.

I'm afraid this has a rather major limitation.

If you do this and the call ringing on someones desk phone is as a result of a call to their DDI (rather than a group), the pickup code will not work.

The other option is using *20* to pickup ANY ringing phone but this has it's own problems in a multi site organization - ie using it may pickup a ringing call in another floor/office/dept

[pjr]

I have had another call today from a site that require this functionality.

I envisage it being added as perhaps an additional feature code as below:

When provisioning each user you have an option to allocate them to a pickup group and assign that group an ID (1-9)

Each group has it's own dedicated feature code number for picking up calls placed to any phone (either via DDI or ring/hunt group) that's a member of that group.

eg Ext 2004 and Ext 2007 are located on the same office floor and are members of pickup group 4, the feature code to pickup calls placed to pickup group 4 is *204*

Call comes in to ext 2004's DDI and ext 2007 can dial *204* and answer the call without having to know which ext is ringing, and also more importantly without the risk of picking up a call that's ringing on another phone in another dept/floor/office (which he would if he used *20*)

Please implement this guys - it cant come soon enough

Paul

[FoxhallVoIP]

Just opened a new thread on this before seeing your request ...
100% agree with the request for call pick-up groups. Most old PBX systems (even very old analogue) offer this where you simply configure a pick-up group number into each extension set-up. This allows you then to dial the pick-up code [e.g. *20*] and be confident that you are going to pick up the call ringing in your room / department, and not some call that's been ringing for 2 minutes at some phone on another floor.

This also means that you can have a single button or speed-dial associated with call pick-up. We allocate speed-dial 9 on the Linksys SPA942 phones we deploy.

If you need to pick up a call outside of your pick-up group, only then you would dial the code followed by the extension number (e.g. *20*203).

You can get over-complicated with this in thinking about cross-grouping (i.e. an extension may need to be in two pick-up groups?), but in actual practice this would occur very, VERY rarely - because companies generally want callers handled by people who can give assistance - e.g. if the call is ringing in accounts, and picked up by the IT department, they aren't going to be much help.

I've talked to 3CX support about this, and have always been steered in the direction of Call Groups - but the call pick-up situation has nothing to do with call groups, because it is occurring where a call is ringing at a single extension - i.e. it may be an incoming DDI call, an internal call, or a call transferred by another user or receptionist.

The addition of a ring-group number in the extension configuration page would be wonderful please.