3CX Pickup/Ring groups advice

[TimElse]

Hi all,

I’m going to be setting up some ring groups for departments- is there a way of setting it up so that when a call group is ringing if nobody picks up then it goes to the voicemail of the person they were originally trying to call? at the moment I'm only able to ping it back to reception but this isn't adequate as we still want external callers to be able to leave voicemail on an individual extension that is part of a group.

So for example, myself and person B are in a ring group, somebody tries to ring me, it rings on both mine and B's phone but when it eventually goes unanswered it would need to go to my voicemail as the call was originally designated for me?

At the moment, I can connect individual extensions to a ring group.. it rings on all which is what I want it to do but it ideally needs to go through to the VM of the individual in that group who the call is specifically for.

Any ideas folks?

 

[leejor]

When a call goes to a ring group it's because you want more than one person (a department) to have access to it. Unless a call was to one extension which in turn forwarded to a ring group, then the call was never destined for a single person. When a ring group call goes unanswered, you can have it go off to a destination, but that is fixed, not determined by anything that the caller originally dialled.

You could have the call go back to a receptionist, who could then send it on to a specific voicemail box.

 

[TimElse]

Hi,

Really its more if someone is away from their desk then they can easily pick the call up as it appears on their screen that somebody is trying to call a colleague in their group, e.g. it might be that an external caller is trying to speak to an individual in the group but they can't pick it up as they are away from their desk then another colleague at least is easily able to detect someone is trying to call and can pick it up on their behalf if needs be.

I know they can dial *20*[ext] to pick the call up but they are relying on hearing the call clearly which when a lot of our staff use headsets can be quite difficult.

Going back to the receptionist isn't going to be practical for our use really as if we had ring groups set up for all of our departments then no individuals in those groups would ever receive voicemail's , even if they transferred it straight back to the ext voicemail reception would be inundated unfortunately.

Many thanks,
Tim

 

[livn46]

In our management area there are several admin assistants for different managers who want to be able to answer the phone for anyone in the area who gets a call, so we got them receptionist-style phones (a big phone with a couple sidecars), so they can each see everybody else in the area at a glance. So if A's phone rings, B, C and D will all see the corresponding button on their phone light up and any of them can hit the button and answer the call. However, the call itself never leaves the original phone line, and will still end up in the original party's voicemail if not answered. That sounds like what you want. But it's a lot of extra cost (those sidecars are ridiculously expensive).

Other than that, I don't think what you're asking for is possible: once a call is routed to either a ring group or a queue, it follows that logic from then on, and doesn't remember who it was "originally" intended for anymore.

 

[Frank D]

Hi Tim,

we are using busy lamp fields with pickup functionality for this job. You can use those extension boards as livn46 describes, but you don't need to. It depends on how many colleagues you need to pick up calls from.

We are using this at many phones. The key flashes and you can see, who is calling your colleague. Than you press the falshing key and you pickup the call (this function can use *20* in the background or a different technology, depends on the settings). You can set audio alerts, too.

This functionality depdends on the phones and the number of Line-Kys / BLF Keys you have available.

Hi,

Really its more if someone is away from their desk then they can easily pick the call up as it appears on their screen that somebody is trying to call a colleague in their group, e.g. it might be that an external caller is trying to speak to an individual in the group but they can't pick it up as they are away from their desk then another colleague at least is easily able to detect someone is trying to call and can pick it up on their behalf if needs be.

I know they can dial *20*[ext] to pick the call up but they are relying on hearing the call clearly which when a lot of our staff use headsets can be quite difficult.

Going back to the receptionist isn't going to be practical for our use really as if we had ring groups set up for all of our departments then no individuals in those groups would ever receive voicemail's , even if they transferred it straight back to the ext voicemail reception would be inundated unfortunately.

Many thanks,
Tim