Automatically Un - Park forgotten calls

[Thiek]

I'm not sure if anyone is using this but I cannot get it work, maybe I missing a setting somewhere? Doing a new 3CX install and the people at this site frequently use park/pickup on existing system. I downloaded/installed the latest version of 3CX, from 3CX site, on July 1st, 2018 so this is the latest version 15.5.

Settings > Call Parking > checked the box Automatically Un - Park forgotten calls, set this to 60 second and tried two different options, "Transfer to the user that originally parked the call" and "Transfer to Ext... selected the operator ext.". Called from cell into an extension, picked up the call and then pressed transfer, pressed *02 and transfer again which parked the call in cell 2. I sat there for over 5 minutes on my cell (with both calls) and nothing happened but hold music.

 

[VoIPTools]

You are using the legacy park method. Try using the newer park method using either the phone client or a BLF on your phone.

 

[Thiek]

Thank you Matt. Hmm, management does not want people using the soft-phone client, long story but good reason as to why even though myself I love it and use the crap out it. Sounds like we would have to configured BLFs for all the IP phones, I see Shared Park Ext 1... to 8 and not sure which number to assign to whom. I got a call parked on an IP phone but not sure how to pull it. Oh, and can it be pulled from a good old fashion analog phone in the warehouse as we 102 of them where people potentially pull parked calls. My parked call did xfer to the operator after 60 but still why doesn't the other method work? Sounds like 3cx folks have bug to fix but I'm not paying to open a ticket and log a defect.

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

Hello @Thiek

As mentioned you are using the Orbit parking method and not the shared parking method. The option you enabled in the PBX settings only applies to shared parking and not to orbit parking.
https://www.3cx.com/blog/docs/call-parking/

To use shared parking you need to assign BLF keys to shared parking to all phones that support them (analog phones do not). The way they work is you press the BLF key to park the call to the assigned key and the key lights up to all phones that have the same shared parking configured. Then anyone can press the BLF key to pick up the call.
If you need multiple shared parking slots you will to assign multiple shared parking slots to each phone.

 

[Thiek]

Thank you Yiannish. This is sort of misleading because within the Settings menu under Dial Codes this shows to park a call press *0 and un-park is *1, and so. Then there's a link for Call Parking. Nowhere on the screens does it say anything about the Shared Parking vs Orbit parking.

This is too bad because going forward we'll have many sites that use orbit parking. As mentioned earlier we have many warehouses with 100 to 200 analog phones. So please, do not take away orbit parking. I would also be nice if someone could make orbit parking work like shared parking, where some sort action will trigger after x number of minutes. Otherwise, this is bad for customer service, someone stuck in an orbit on hold and forgotten about.

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

I don't think that orbit parking is going anywhere as it is used by analog and legacy devices without BLF keys.
I would recommend creating a feature request regarding this on https://www.3cx.com/community/forums/3cx-ideas/ . All posts are reviewed by their corresponding Departments and, if feasible and voted for by other users as well, may be implemented in an upcoming service pack or update.

 

[CentrexJ]

Thank you Yiannish. This is sort of misleading because within the Settings menu under Dial Codes this shows to park a call press *0 and un-park is *1, and so. Then there's a link for Call Parking. Nowhere on the screens does it say anything about the Shared Parking vs Orbit parking.

This is too bad because going forward we'll have many sites that use orbit parking. As mentioned earlier we have many warehouses with 100 to 200 analog phones. So please, do not take away orbit parking. I would also be nice if someone could make orbit parking work like shared parking, where some sort action will trigger after x number of minutes. Otherwise, this is bad for customer service, someone stuck in an orbit on hold and forgotten about.

Thiek there is a way to setup dummy extensions and point them to the shared parking orbits in "forwarding rules" by using "forward to number" and putting in "SP1", "SP2", Etc as the destination so you can make extension 101 direct to SP1, 102 direct to SP2.

Then reception can park a call to the one of the shared parking spots with SP1, SP2, etc BLFs on their phone and the people in the warehouse can dial 101, 102, etc to unpark the call.

This is not officially 3cx recommended or supported but lots of people use this feature.

 

[VoIPTools]

Dang CentrexJ, I wish I had thought of that. Very nice.