• V20: 3CX Re-engineered. Get V20 for increased security, better call management, a new admin console and Windows softphone. Learn More.

Multiple Incoming Calls for Reception Desk

Status
Not open for further replies.

Frank86

Customer
Joined
Jan 18, 2018
Messages
299
Reaction score
25
How do I set up 3CX (latest version) so that receptionists can hear multiple calls coming in, place them on hold while dispatching previous ones?

I have set up a front desk ring group with our two front desk staff in it. It works well when one or two incoming calls ring. The third call does not ring to the front desk but goes straight to the backup extension set up in the "destination if no answer" section of the front desk ring group.

What I would like to happen is for multiple calls to still all ring to the front desk, allow the front desk to pick them up, ask the caller to please hold, park the calls, pick them up in the proper order, and transfer them as needed.

how may I achieve this?
 
Go to the Parameters and set ALLOWUSEBUSYOPTFORGROUP to 1 and restart services. This will let you get as many calls as you have line appearances on the phones
 

Attachments

  • upload_2018-9-21_15-33-0.png
    upload_2018-9-21_15-33-0.png
    8 KB · Views: 67
  • Like
Reactions: Eliq91 and Frank86
Warning!!!

This option has been known to occasionally cause stuck calls. The only way to get them "unstuck" is to restart services.
Currently 3CX does not allow multiple calls to be delivered to Ring Groups/Queue members.

If the receptionists are using deskphones with a larger amount of BLF keys, or the 3CX Client for Windows that also has space for quite a few, you could allocate dedicated let's say 10 Shared Parking slots to the receptionists and instead of using a Ring Group, us a Queue.
So you would have:

  1. Call comes into Queue.
  2. Both receptionists are on call - caller is waiting in Queue
  3. Receptionist parks call (so free as far as the Queue is concerned)
  4. Answers next call
  5. Repeat 4 and 5 until all calls are answered
  6. Start retrieving calls from Parking slots and transferring
In a large amount of calls, if they are 2, they could also "team up" where one would only answer and park, the other would unpark and transfer.
 
Nick, are you saying that setting ALLOWUSEBUSYOPTFORGROUP to 1 occasionally causes stuck calls?
 
Nick, are you saying that setting ALLOWUSEBUSYOPTFORGROUP to 1 occasionally causes stuck calls?
Yes, that is correct. This was an experimental parameter that we put in there with the intention of doing what you want, but never made it "to production" because of such issues.

EDIT:
Think about it, why would we hide this in the parameters if it worked flawlessly.
 
  • Like
Reactions: craigreilly
That makes sense. I did set up a ring-all queue for the front desk and 5 shared parking buttons on their phone (T58). It worked well, but one of the front desk staff mentioned something about a new incoming call not ringing to her phone when she was on another call--the new call only rang to the other front desk person. Does that make sense? Does a ring-all queue work the same way as a ring-all ring group? Or are there differences between the two?
 
It worked well, but one of the front desk staff mentioned something about a new incoming call not ringing to her phone when she was on another call--the new call only rang to the other front desk person. Does that make sense? Does a ring-all queue work the same way as a ring-all ring group? Or are there differences between the two?
There are many differences between Ring Groups and Queues, but I will focus only on the one you are asking for.
When a call comes into to both a RG and Q that is Ring all, 3CX rings extensions that are:
  • Members of RG or Q
  • Registered
  • Not on a call
This is the same for both. The difference is that in RGs, this check happens only at the point the call enters, so if you are on a call, call comes into RG, and you hang up 2 seconds later, you will not get it.

With Qs this is slightly different. The check will happen at the entry of the new call, but also every "Ring Time" seconds:
upload_2018-9-27_10-32-7.png
So in a Q it will enter, not ring you, but after you hang up, after a few seconds it will re-assess the status of the Agents and ring accordingly.

So in your case, the Ring Time value should be something fairly short.
 
Thank you. We are testing the queue. The one difference we have noticed is that, with the ring group, if reception 1 phone is busy and reception 2 is not, both phones and web clients still show the new incoming call coming in. With the queue, reception 1 phone and web client do not show the new incoming call coming in.

Is that expected behavior? Can it be changed so that the reception 1 still sees the new call coming in even if busy?
 
I'm not sure where you are looking in the Web Client, but this is the view of a Queue from the perspective of a Queue Agent of the Queue they are in:
upload_2018-9-28_9-45-45.png

As you can see, 2 calls are connect to Agents, 1 is ringing the 3rd Agent but hasn't answered yet, and another 2 are waiting in the Queue.
 
I didn't look in the web client. We noticed the difference on the phones.
When the front desk is set up as a ring group, both front desk phones ring when a call comes in, even if one of them is on another call.

When the front desk is set up as a queue, only the available front desk phone rings.
 
This is because you made the change I mentioned to allow multiple calls from a RG to hit the phones. Queues are designed by default to only allow one call and I don't think there is a way to override as that would defeat the entire purpose of the queue. If you put that parameter back to default then RG and queue will behave the same.
 
Got it. I think my front desk people prefer the tweaked RG behavior over the queue since that's what they had with our previous phone system.
 
Most do which is why I made that recommendation. But as Nick pointed out it can have unexpected consequences.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Frank86
10-4. We'll keep an eye on it. Hopefully, it'll work well.
 
10-4. We'll keep an eye on it. Hopefully, it'll work well.

Have you noticed any stuck calls? I'm thinking about implementing the same thing.
 
No stuck calls so far. Knock on wood.
 
I too, was curious about the downside of using the allowusebusyopt parameter, as we have it active on a lot of installs.

I finally found one.

If the parameter is selected, you can't transfer a call directly to the voicemail of another extension (like *4100).

It calls the extension instead.

We have our Yealink phones set to "attended transfer", so that may have made a difference (but that's our most common setup).

Put the parameter back to "0", and the transfer to another extension's voice mail works normally.

We just haven't had that many people use the *4 option, so never noticed it before.

Just FYI.

And this really needs to be fixed. The person on the phone needs to be able to see the caller ID of the second incoming call to know if he needs to take it.

So +1 on the multiple calls to an extension in a ring group.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Getting Started - Admin

Latest Posts

Forum statistics

Threads
141,405
Messages
747,495
Members
144,371
Latest member
NYCTECHZONE
Get 3CX - Absolutely Free!

Link up your team and customers Phone System Live Chat Video Conferencing

Hosted or Self-managed. Up to 10 users free forever. No credit card. Try risk free.

3CX
A 3CX Account with that email already exists. You will be redirected to the Customer Portal to sign in or reset your password if you've forgotten it.