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Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external calls

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xyzzy_rad_eu

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Hi all,

i'm trying to configure diferrent OutOfOffice rules for internal and external calls.

External calls should be redirected to a Digital Receptionist stating our openinghours.
Internal calls should still be able to be received.

It's very annoying that people can't call internally outside office hours.

Is there any way to accomplish this ?

Thanks in advance!
 
Re: Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external call

what version of 3cx are you running? I am on 9 and I have out of office options for internal and external. double click an extension, go to forwarding rules, and there should be a tab for out of office. then you should see options for internal and external calls.
 
Re: Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external call

xyzzy_rad_eu said:
Hi all,

i'm trying to configure diferrent OutOfOffice rules for internal and external calls.

External calls should be redirected to a Digital Receptionist stating our openinghours.
Internal calls should still be able to be received.

It's very annoying that people can't call internally outside office hours.

Is there any way to accomplish this ?

Thanks in advance!

Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of office hours? Office hours global or Ext specific are there to say "hey I am not at the office so leave a VMail or whatever you choose as destination". If you are in the office then change status to available.
To answer your main question: yes it is possible but not in the DR menu.
If using a DID you can set out of office hours rules in the Edit VOIP Provider field and tell it to go to your out of office DR.
If using PSTN Gateway, do the same thing, send the trunk to out of office DR.
 
Re: Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external call

skagen said:
what version of 3cx are you running? I am on 9 and I have out of office options for internal and external. double click an extension, go to forwarding rules, and there should be a tab for out of office. then you should see options for internal and external calls.

i'm also running v9 and i know which menu/option you are talking about.
but this option doesn't help me because it only allows me to forward calls.
i want the internal calls to NOT be forwarded, but just ring the phone.
 
Re: Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external call

nbailey said:
xyzzy_rad_eu said:
Hi all,

i'm trying to configure diferrent OutOfOffice rules for internal and external calls.

External calls should be redirected to a Digital Receptionist stating our openinghours.
Internal calls should still be able to be received.

It's very annoying that people can't call internally outside office hours.

Is there any way to accomplish this ?

Thanks in advance!

Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of office hours? Office hours global or Ext specific are there to say "hey I am not at the office so leave a VMail or whatever you choose as destination". If you are in the office then change status to available.
To answer your main question: yes it is possible but not in the DR menu.
If using a DID you can set out of office hours rules in the Edit VOIP Provider field and tell it to go to your out of office DR.
If using PSTN Gateway, do the same thing, send the trunk to out of office DR.

Thanks for your answer, i never noticed i could put out of office rules on the PSTN Gateways' incoming rules.
I'm pretty sure this can fix my problem.

In my eyes it's not really defeating the purpose of office hours.
The office hours are globally managed by myself, so people do not set their own.
For example: our office opens at 8h30 but our shops open at 10h, the offices have lunch break from 12 to 12h30 and close at 17h, the shops have no lunch break and close at 18h30.
So this means customers can only call our offices and shops through the external lines during office hours.
Outside office hours customers get a DR stating our opening hours.
But if some people at the office are doing some overtime, they still need to be able to reach each other through the internal lines.

Thanks again for the help!

I'll leave one final suggestion for the people at 3CX: please add an option "Do not forward calls" to the forwarding options of an extension and incoming rule. (example: external calls forward to Digital Receptionist, internal calls not forwarded)
I'm sure a lot of people will appreciate that :)
 
Re: Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external call

The problem is everyone has different needs for Office Hours, so it is difficult to make a system that works for every situation.
If folks are working overtime after hours they can switch there extensions to available (*30) to override it for you.
I am not 100% sure what your asking as your last request but there already is a way to determine how calls are handled in forwarding rules per extension, "different behavior for internal calls" so if you want to forward external calls to a DR make those changes in the Trunk itself and for internal calls change it to go to say Voice mail. There are a lot of options and things you can do with Office Hours to work for most situations.
 
Re: Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external call

nbailey said:
The problem is everyone has different needs for Office Hours, so it is difficult to make a system that works for every situation.
If folks are working overtime after hours they can switch there extensions to available (*30) to override it for you.
I am not 100% sure what your asking as your last request but there already is a way to determine how calls are handled in forwarding rules per extension, "different behavior for internal calls" so if you want to forward external calls to a DR make those changes in the Trunk itself and for internal calls change it to go to say Voice mail. There are a lot of options and things you can do with Office Hours to work for most situations.

I don't want people to override it, because that would mean our customers can get trough too.
If people are doing overtime, they still want to be able to make internal call, but they don't want customers to be able to call them.

So, what i want is for external calls to be forwarded, but internal calls should NOT be forwarded.

Let me show you what I need:
(this image is fake, i added the option 'Do NOT forward calls')

donotforward.png


Hope this makes it a little clearer.
 
Re: Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external call

I think I understand what you want now. I would not use out of office, instead, use one of the custom options and set that up. Using the outofoffice assumes that you want call (any calls) not to go to the phone. If you use one of the custom settings, all the calls will come to the phone, but you could set the no answer for 1 second, and then the 'send calls to' the operator extension. will this work?
 
Re: Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external call

EDIT: sorry, my above option will not work. I got lost in what you needed. Let me read the question again...(and have more coffee)
 
Re: Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external call

or another option while being harder to setup would be to set global office hours to normal office business hours and set trunks/voip providers to this so they route to out of office hours DR, then set custom office hours for employees which are for example like 6AM to 11PM so even if overtime is reached they can still call each other but external calls don't come in. I can't see your image as it failed to load.
 
Re: Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external call

Ok, I think I have it, but it is a bit complicated. Lets say the user has extension '200'. This extension should be set to always accept calls. Then you set up a second "dummy" extension. this extension will have office hours set up to forward to digital receptionist after hours, and during normal hours it will send calls to extension "200". In the inbound rules for the DID, send the calls to the dummy extension (I call it a dummy extension because it will be invisible to everyone except the system). This way, when people call internally, the calls will go through everytime. When people call from outside during office hours, the calls will get routed to extension 200, and after hours the dummy extension should send them to the receptioninst. Does this make sense? I know it's a bit complicated, but this is similar to something I had to do for a few unique cases at my company.
 
Re: Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external call

And one thing I forgot to mention is Trunks/VoIP providers can have specific office hours, so you could in theory give external calls 8-5 office hours and then go to an out of office hours DR. Then set global to later i.e. 8AM to midnight so all employees can make calls if overtime is being worked.
 
Re: Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external call

skagen said:
Ok, I think I have it, but it is a bit complicated. Lets say the user has extension '200'. This extension should be set to always accept calls. Then you set up a second "dummy" extension. this extension will have office hours set up to forward to digital receptionist after hours, and during normal hours it will send calls to extension "200". In the inbound rules for the DID, send the calls to the dummy extension (I call it a dummy extension because it will be invisible to everyone except the system). This way, when people call internally, the calls will go through everytime. When people call from outside during office hours, the calls will get routed to extension 200, and after hours the dummy extension should send them to the receptioninst. Does this make sense? I know it's a bit complicated, but this is similar to something I had to do for a few unique cases at my company.

Yeah, i came up with the dummy-extensions idea too...
but like you said ... it's pretty complicated...

this is my current plan :
- user-extension (eg: 200) will allways accept call
- on the PSTN device I will setup OutOfOffice-hours

this results in :
- people will still be able to call internally
- when people call from outside, they get forwarded by the PSTN-rule to a "we are closed"-message

cross fingers, i'm going to try this now! :eek:
 
Re: Diferent OutOfOffice rule for internal and external call

I have good news: i fixed it :)

I'm using a combination of outOfOffice-rules on the PSTN incomming rules, and a couple of "dummy" extensions.

Thank you guys very much for your help!
 
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