Calls still getting through to extensions After Hours

[sevenvoip]

We have global office ours set on this particular client to use our After Hours IVR at 4:30 Monday - Friday. Occasionally, when someone calls in After Hours, an extension will still ring inside the office. For instance, yesterday we had 3 calls ring extensions at 4:41, 4:43, and 4:44. Why is this happening?

Our PBX is hosted with Amazon Lightsail and using an SBC.

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

Have you confirmed that the Out of Office call routing is triggered correctly at 16:30? If yes, and it goes to the IVR you mention, does there exist any routing from that IVR that can go to those extensions, either via a Ring Group, Call Queue or any other path?

Also, does this always affect the same extensions?

 

[Saqqara]

Have you looked at the logs files, may point you in a direction where you can find the issue

 

[sevenvoip]

Have you confirmed that the Out of Office call routing is triggered correctly at 16:30? If yes, and it goes to the IVR you mention, does there exist any routing from that IVR that can go to those extensions, either via a Ring Group, Call Queue or any other path?

Also, does this always affect the same extensions?

The IVR only has 2 options, and both are set to transfer to voicemail for that extension.

I've had it happen on different extensions, but lately it seems to happen on the same extension.

 

[sevenvoip]

Have you looked at the logs files, may point you in a direction where you can find the issue

Which specific log would I be looking in? I have them set to "medium" and to keep for 10 days

 

[Alphabetic]

Do you have access to the terminal in your instance? I would confirm the time is correct.

 

[sevenvoip]

What's that command again?

 

[Alphabetic]

If you click terminal it will tell you.

i think it's date

 

[sevenvoip]

Date is correct

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

This might be a case of callers using the direct dial feature while in the IVR. To determine if this is the case or note, I'd recommend creating a second IVR to temporarily use in place of your current one. Just make sure that the new IVR is of type "DTMF Input" which does not allow direct dialing. Change your Inbound Rule routing to route calls to it during Out of Office hours, test it to make sure the expected behavior applies and then just wait to see if the same issue occurs.

 

[sevenvoip]

Good deal. Will try that now and keep you posted.

 

[sevenvoip]

Chris, I think I found the culprit, but I don't know how to disable it. I noticed that every time an extension rang after hours, it rang the same operator extension. So after a little troubleshooting, I realized that all extensions are using the default voicemail greeting which states "Record your message and press # or press * to contact the operator." They are pressing * and then it will ring the operator extension. How can I disable this * feature?

 

[sevenvoip]

I created a dummy extension called "operator" and disabled its voicemail. I also allowed it to ring for 1 second then go to the "on-call" extensions voicemail. I changed my "3CX Operator extension" to this new dummy operator extension, and that seems to have resolved my issue. it's a terrible band aid, but 3CX needs to have a feature to disable transferring out of voicemail.

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

Hey @sevenvoip

Glad to here you were able to identify the issue, although I'm afraid you cannot disable this functionality.

What you have done will work but you could also do one of the following:

1. You could change the greeting prompt by replacing it with a custom one. You might also want to consider simply downloading the default one and removing the part where it says"...or press starto to contact..."

2. You could set a forwarding rule exception on the operator extension to match all calls and send them to voicemail when out of office hours. This will of course mean that even internal calls to the operator extension will match that rule.

 

[sevenvoip]

I may try option 2, but option 1 will not work. It seems to be the same customers that know of this little "trick" so I'm sure they'll still attempt to press *