3CX filter out cell phone voicemail for critical afterhours calls?

[jbryant84]

We have a client that HAS TO answer every afterhours call, in case one of their customers has an issue and needs immediate assistance. Voicemail is not acceptable. They're using an answering service currently, we tried using a cell phone forward as a member of a ring group, but one employee's cell phone was dead or out of service, so the call was immediately sent there. The other phones in the ring group didn't even ring. 3CX just sees answered, it can't tell answered by what. Is anyone aware of a way for 3cx to have confirmation (through an IVR or other mechanism) that the call was answered by a person and not voicemail? The functionality in the " Screen Calls by requesting caller name using an IVR " option would be perfect, but it's inverse, we need the 3CX extension to be presented with that menu, not the external caller.

 

[leejor]

Unfortunately the Rebound Option, which is the sort of feature you are looking for, does not work with Ring my Mobile, only with forwarding from an extension.

https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/announce-rebound-on-all-mobile-rings-simultaneous.63883/

When a call is sent to a mobile, and there is answer supervison (there should not be when the mobile is off and there is no voicemail), 3CX has no idea if the call was answered by a person or voicemail, it just knows that call was answered and will stop ringing the other ring group members.

 

[jbryant84]

TY for the suggestion. I enabled rebound on a test extension for away status, set the phone to away and just let it ring. The call will eventually still go to voicemail. I figured I could make this work by adding some extensions to a prioritized ring group, set the timeout lower than how long it takes 3CX to give up and all will be well. I get 486 Busy when dialing the ring group. One member, many members, doesn't matter. Trying to figure out why now

 

[leejor]

If unanswered, most calls do eventually end up in voicemail. It is going to be difficult to get a call to keep "circulating" until answered by a human, and if it goes on too long, the caller may simply hang up.

Keep in mind that extension forwarding rules are ignored when that extension is a ring group member, and the call is to the RG and not the extension. There is a non-recomended way that may get around this, but may introduce unintended consequences according to 3CX. If you want more information, do a search for ALLOWUSEBUSYOPTFORGROUP

 

[leejor]

Even with Rebound, unanswered calls will go to an extensions voicemail, they will not try another extension.

If the mobiles voicemail timeout can be set to a period longer than the ring time for a ring group, set to prioritized hunt, and you did enable forwarding for ring group calls, then in theory, call would try each mobile until there was an answer. The ring group no answer timeout could route to a second ring group made up of the same members. The problem would still remain, that if the mobile were off, or unreachable, the call will go to the mobile voicemail. Without removing the mobiles voicemail option, there is no way around this.