Solved Disable Call Waiting on SNOM M700 and SNOM M900 via 3CX Provisioning Server

[Gavino]

3CX provisioning turns on the "call waiting feature" for every extension in my SNOM M700 and M900 base stations. This plays havoc with our ring groups, and I have to manually disable it. The only way I can make that stick is to remove the provisioning URL from the base stations. This creates its own headaches with having to manually keep the base station config in sync with the PBX.

In the 3CX Management Console, under each extension I have the option "Accept multiple calls" disabled (unticked), so I can only assume that 3CX prov turning on call waiting for each extension is incorrect behavior (i.e. a bug).

My environment is 3CX Professional 16.0.9 (paid subscription) hosted on AWS, and the M700 and M900 base stations are running firmware "530.2". I would be extremely grateful if a 3CX coder could address this. If the fix is in the latest v18 that is fine - I intend to upgrade to the latest v18 early in the new year (probably January) - I just need to finish the M700 to M900 upgrades first. If you can also patch v16 for this as well then that would be fantastic. Thanks kindly.

 

[JohnS_3CX]

This plays havoc with our ring groups

Hello, can you please explain how the ring groups are set up, and what problem exactly this causes?

Describe the issue in detail please

 

[Gavino]

Hi John. When I reprovisioned a heavily-used base station (multicell) after hours via 3CX that had previously had call waiting disabled, the complaints flooded in the next morning. I quickly turned off call waiting and people were again happy.

The most vocal complaints came from people in ring groups that get a lot of calls. We have half a dozen ring groups. As an example - we have one guy looking after spare parts enquiries (Parts Ring Group). He is the only extension in the ring group but if he doesn't pick up within a fixed time period it bounces to another ring group with multiple extensions and then the call gets answered (Admin Ring Group). When call waiting is on, the poor dude has to sit there talking to a customer with "call waiting" beeping in his ear which he says is very distracting. He said he can't think straight while that's going on.

The system should go "oh this guy is engaged, lets bounce this call to the next ring group". So the next group can say "oh yeah John is on a call can I take your number and get him to give you a call back?", rather than just buzzing poor John constantly who is busy trying to concentrate with someone else, and making the next caller wait unnecessarily for the timeout period.

Anyway, ring group or not, I think it would be good for any extension to be able to have call waiting on or off depending on user preference, without having to break the link to the 3CX prov server. There might be some managers who only get direct calls who might want it on (although it hasn't been requested). Given the choice between "always on" and "always off" I would definitely go for the latter. Would love this to work.

 

[JohnS_3CX]

I do agree with you that the system should not be sending the call to someone who has "Accept Multiple Calls" turned off.

Is your system is doing something unexpected or is the system doing exactly what it should be, but perhaps you configured something in a way that causes you the unwanted behavior?


I was not able to cause my system to behave like yours, until I started playing around with the Snom base:

Extensions 034 and 035 are in the same Ring Group, but they are also on the same handset because I manually caused this to happen by editing both extensions to use the same device Idx (chosing Handset 1)


This is sufficient to cause the behavior your mentioned. I cannot come up with any other reason for this happening. Can you confirm if this is indeed the case in your system like my example?


Notice here how I registered two independent extensions on the same handset IPEI / Idx

 

[Gavino]

The "Idx" column is sequential, and matches the "VoIP Idx" column - 3CX provisions that part correctly. The only manual tasks I undertook were to (1) remove the Configuration Server Address in Management settings, and then (2) toggle the Call Waiting feature off on each extension.
Is it possible to get 3CX to not override the setting if it's been customised on the base station? I know that when I set QoS DSCP values - the provisioning server doesn't overwrite those. Could 3CX behave the same for call waiting feature and not overwrite it for subsequent provisioning updates?
I have 3 spare extensions and a spare M700 base station - I can do some more tests tomorrow on call waiting behavior if you'd like me to set something up. Thanks.

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Could 3CX behave the same for call waiting feature and not overwrite it for subsequent provisioning updates?

No, we want this on by default for customers that use Accept Multiple Calls. This is not the root cause of your problem.

When call waiting is on, the poor dude has to sit there talking to a customer with "call waiting" beeping in his ear which he says is very distracting. He said he can't think straight while that's going on.

I'm still not understanding why your phone receives a 2nd call in the the first place - this should not be happening.

There is a 3CX parameter called ALLOWUSEBUSYOPTFORGROUP
Is this this set to 1 in your 3CX parameters?

 

[Gavino]

Hi John please close this one off. I don't know what happened really but after rebooting the PBX we seem to be good again. And you are right - the call waiting feature is not an issue being on when the second calls aren't being sent to the extensions in the first place. Thanks for your time. I will monitor and if it happens again, do some more thorough investigations.

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Sure thing, if you run into any trouble we can check again in the future!