Call forwarding from a queue

[pscs]

I'm using 3CX v11 SP3, and am having a problem with call forwarding calls which arrive into a queue.

I'm asking here in case anyone else has experienced the problem and has a solution or workaround.

If I set my 3CX extension to 'out of office' with an action of 'forward to my mobile', then if someone rings my extension directly, the call gets forwarded to my mobile as desired.

However, if I am logged into a queue, and someone calls the queue, then the call forwarding doesn't work, even though 3CX is trying.

The reason seems to be that if someone calls me directly, then the forwarding uses the 'Extension caller id' (of my 3CX extension) as the SIP FROM address when making the outbound call for forwarding. This works great.

However, if someone calls through the queue, then the 3CX forwarding uses the ORIGINAL caller's caller ID as the SIP FROM address when making the outbound call. This causes the SIP trunk (with VoIP Unlimited) to fail, with a '403 Spoofed From-URI Detected' SIP error. What happens now is that 3CX keeps on trying to forward the call out, the caller is left on hold, and lots of errors are logged, but the call goes nowhere.

So:
- is this what 3CX is meant to do? (use the original caller's caller ID)
- if not, any ideas where I may have it set wrong?
- if it is meant to do this, is there any way around this? (To get it to use the extension caller ID of the forwarding extensions)

As a related issue - is there any way to get a forwarded call from a queue to use a particular outbound rule? I can't use the queue extension number in the test where the call is coming from. As far as I can see it just seems to use the first available rule. The problem with that is that I can't even set up an extra SIP trunk just for forwarded calls with forced FROM SIP header data.

Currently, this is causing us problems, as it makes things very hard when calls would have to be taken on a mobile phone or have to be forwarded to a call answering service.

 

[leejor]

Just off the top of my head, I'm wondering if this was not considered originally by 3CX, as it really isn't the standard implementation of a queue. I would think that, for the most part, when a queue is deployed, agents are logged in and assumed to be available to take calls from customers. The calls are not expected to be forwarded to an off-site location/mobile where the possibility to miss (mobile is in use, call goes to mobiles VM), or loose a call, exists.

 

[pscs]

I appreciate it's not totally ideal, but 3CX still tries to do the forwarding, just badly.

It's not that unusual a thing to want to do - looking in the forums, there are many messages about different aspects of forwarding calls from queue members, so it's not like I'm the first person to think of it

At the moment, the only 'workaround' I can think of that may work would be to totally reconfigure the inbound rules in 3CX every time people have to work away from the office (eg in bad weather, or whatever). This is less than ideal. When we used Asterisk, that would do what we needed.

(FWIW, if we use a 'Ring Group' rather than a queue, it seems to work OK, and that would still have the same issues with calls going to a mobile's voicemail, etc)

 

[nb]

Do you have the ticket ID of your support issue? Can you send it to us let me check your case in more detail.
My comment on this

However, if someone calls through the queue, then the 3CX forwarding uses the ORIGINAL caller's caller ID as the SIP FROM address when making the outbound call. This causes the SIP trunk (with VoIP Unlimited) to fail, with a '403 Spoofed From-URI Detected' SIP error. What happens now is that 3CX keeps on trying to forward the call out, the caller is left on hold, and lots of errors are logged, but the call goes nowhere.

The problem is that there are 2 sides of this feature. I will give you an example

A) There are users that are not interested to see the main company number. They want to see the originator number - who is really calling the queue on the other end - the customer.

B) Then there are other ppl that are happy to see their main number. Fair enough - in this case you need to change the logic and tell 3CX to put the Main number in the invite and not the $Originator caller id. You need to put $Outbound CID.

Voip unlimited sees this as spoofing. Yes it is normal in providers for security reasons.

And we also know this very well. In fact, the default template that is shipped with VoIp unlimited, sets the outbound parameter to OutboundCallerID as it should be and not the originator Caller ID (which is another option for providers that allow CID manipulation)

So could you please have a look at your settings? Lets see if this is something we can figure out?

Other options are to contact the VoIp Provider and sign an agreement that you allow your CID to be changed OR you can also tell your provider that when it sees something thats is not known to the provider, it blindly replaces it with the main number.