Digital Receptionist loop with operator

[johnfromen6]

Hi I hope someone can help me with this little problem. I’m new to the forum and 3CX and have to say it’s a great program. I had previously been using a Linksys spa9000 as my hardware PBX but had problems with it and decided to try 3CX which has already proved itself better for my purposes than the SPA 9000.

I only have a small home setup so am trying out the free version (v10) on a Windows XP Pro SP3 machine. I have 5 IP phone extensions numbered 100-104 (all Linksys SPA901’s). I have set ext 102 as the operator extension and use Gradwell as my VOIP provider.

I had wanted all 5 extensions to ring on receiving an incoming external call but found that only the operator extension rang. So I created a ring group and added all 5 extensions to it (I called it “Ring Alll”) then for the operator extension (102) I changed the forwarding rules to if unanswered in 1 second it would forward to “Ring All”. That worked fine but my first question is was there a more direct way of getting all the extensions to ring at the same time without changing the operator extension forwarding rule?

Then I read in the manual about the Digital Receptionist and thought it would be cool to have external calls picked up by the Digital Receptionist and provide a menu to select the desired extension. So I set that up and recorded a message that provided for each of my extensions to be rung on the press of a button (0 for ext 100, 4 for ext 104 etc.) the only problem was that I also set 2 for ext 102 my operator extension. The problem with that is that if someone actually presses 2 you get into a loop with the Digital Receptionist responding again. So question 2 is does anyone know how I can avoid this. I set up 5 to forward to my “Ring All” ring group and that works but I’d prefer to be able to reach extension 102 direct?

Any help would be much appreciated. Many thanks.
John

 

[lneblett]

Well, I am a little confused with what you actually want to do. You start with the ring group description and ask if there is a more direct way to accommodate and then you branch off into an IVR scenario and raise the issue of how to eliminate the loop that is created when 102 does not answer within 1 second.

My first question is, why 1 second? This seems to be an extremely short period of time.
The second question is, what happens with the other extensions if they are not answered?
The third is, with a small home set-up as you describe, why a ring all on 5 phones? I would probably get PTSD after a few days of listening to that many phones. You might consider a group that allows you to hear no matter where you are in the house and then use the call pickup feature.
The final (for the second) is, what happens to the call if no one answers from the ring group?

To me, you could have the initial call come into the ring group directly. You have the group set to all, if that is the desire, and then if no answer, you send the call to the voice mail of 102 or however else you want to have but if there is no answer within say 20-30 seconds on any of the 5 phones, then I think it pretty well stands to reason that no one is going to answer at all so you likely need to 1) send to a voice mail, 2) send to an external number or mobile or, 3) end the call. You could get fancy and create another DR to perhaps provide an appropriate message, but the fact of the matter is that the call is not going to be answered unless you divert the call to somewhere other than the 5 phones you have.

If you want to go the IVR route, then do so, but again get rid of the 1 second answer and make a decision of how you want to employ a ring all. You could make several ring all groups with each group leaving out the extension that forwarded the call to the ring group in the first place. So, if a caller presses 2 for 102 and 102 does not answer, then you could send the call to ring group 802 (for instance) which will contain the other 4 extensions. If the call does not get answered by the RG, then forward the call to the Vmail of 102 (which was the originally desired destination anyway). If they press 3 for 103, then send then to RG 803, which has the other 100, 101, 102, & 104 and if no answer send to VM of 103. Repeat as needed for all of the extensions (of course, being a home, maybe you have each ring group expire and send to you at the voice mail of 102). This avoids having the extension that failed to answer the first time, ring a second time as it would still seem unlikely to be answered by the extension that it just left.

 

[johnfromen6]

Thanks really appreciate the help. The use we make of our IP phone network is probably not what most people would use it for. It's pretty much an intercom for the family with external line capability which we will make more use of for outbound calls when I can get it set up right.

We are on three floors. Our standard PSTN line phones are wireless so when we want to get hold of one of the children, say, who will invariably be in the Den on the third floor, with the old Linksys SPA 9000 we could either dial the Den extension direct on the wired IP phone or if one wasn't to hand use a wireless PSTN phone to essentially make an external call in to the house. The only way I could get the latter to work (being a Newbie to VOIP) was to have the SPA 9000 to ring all the extensions on receipt of an external call. Since we don't get a huge amount of external calls and they are mostly from us no-one really minds all the phones ringing. Accordingly when I downloaded the 3CX I tried to set it up initially to ring all the extensions at once because that's what I was used to. But I couldn't get that to work as it only rang the extension set as the operator extension - is there a setting I was missing that would enable all in bound external calls to go to my "Ring All" ring group? I couldn't see one hence why I tried to trick the system by having the operator extension immediately forward to "Ring All" (the reason for the 1 second). You said "To me, you could have the initial call come into the ring group directly" - I suppose that's what I'm missing I don't know how you do that.

Anyway IVR seems a much neater solution but won't I have the same problem with the operator extension answering first? I'm obviously missing something - how do I get the IVR to answer immediately in all cases on receipt of every external call. Then if the first extension doesn't answer your suggestion of different ring groups for forwarding is brilliant and very neat.

Just on a side note one additional question - how do I change the voice prompt for the "attempting to transfer your call now" I know the file format just where should the file be saved to and what should it be called?

Thanks again for all your help.
John

 

[leejor]

In your PSTN trunks settings, left side of 3CX Management Console, you will see the trunk number, under the trunk name. Click on that and you will get the options of where to send an incoming call during office hours. Out of office hours can be set to follow that setting. Set that to go directly to a ring group that you have created containing all of the extensions in the house.

Unlike a business, where individuals are always beside a particular extension, in a home, you generally want all sets to ring, to allow anyone to answer. In most cases , for home use. the operator extension is not really needed.

When someone takes a call, and it isn't for them, they can park the call and locate the person that it is for, or, hey are not home, send the caller direct to that persons voicemail. (transfer to *4xxx)

If a ring group call is not answered it can then go to an automated attendant, with the option of selecting the person the caller wishes to leave a message for, rather than have all messages go into one mailbox, unless that is what you want.

To call all phones on the house, to locate someone, you need only dial the ring group number.

 

[leejor]

Just on a side note one additional question - how do I change the voice prompt for the "attempting to transfer your call now" I know the file format just where should the file be saved to and what should it be called?

If you go down to Settings/System Prompts, you will see a list of all of the recordings and their file names. You can do a search on your computer (It will be in a 3Cx directory). There have been questions about changing, getting rid of this announcement.

When you locate the file, make a backup of it in another directory before doing anything, just in case things go awry.

Replace the file with one of the same name, same format (obviously), a second of silence, or perhaps a ring-back tone.

 

[johnfromen6]

Fantastic I knew it would be something simple. Really appreciate the help. Many many thanks.