DND use

[craigreilly]

Can anyone give a nice concise reason for the DND option on the Softphone? How does it differ from the Presence?
My users get confused and sometimes set DND and Out of Office... and come back and set Available but do not undo DND - and wonder why they don't get calls.
There are also the times they set DND on the phone which dials *32 for Out of Office and undo this action on the Softphone... which leaves the phone in DND and unable to receive calls. Perhaps a CTI command to take phone out of DND. Yealink phones have an http command... perhaps Grand-stream and others have similar.

This has been one of the most frustrating parts of 3cx when I initially rolled out 3+ years ago at my last company, and again this month at my current job - Users get confused by the multiple options on their status and there is no cohesiveness.

The feature set is great for the price-point. But there are some things I wish I could configure a little bit more for our needs - remove DND from the Softphone... or hide the Webmeeting options because we have another solution we use... put our logo on the softphone... etc.

For now - I have removed DND from the phones - and tell them to use * codes or the software... but they want to see it on the phone display too.

 

[lneblett]

Ok, DND on the softphone is no different than on a hard phone. There are some nuances however -

DND can be set at the phone or at the system. They fundamentally have the same function, but how the system may treat them may be slightly different. In the case of DND being set at the phone, it will depend on whether the DND has been programmed to send the DND dial code to the system or not. If not, then the system will send a ring to the phone in a call whereupon the phone will respond with a 486 busy. The phone may ring or chirp for a split second, but once the 486 has been sent, the system will go on with the busy call handling. If DND is set at the system, then the system already knows and will not sent a ring at all.

Presence is a system only feature. It may be set by the phone using a dial code or, in the case of the softphone, a pull down box, but in either case the system is managing the call handling. Unlike DND however, presence allows for a more custom set of call handling rules.

DND, in the later releases of the softphone, is now reflected in the presence screens. At one point this was not the case, and people would try and dial an "available" extension and never get thru and the reason why was not clear.

DND is independent of presence and especially so in the case of the hard phone having a DND button which is not able to be or simply not programmed. Many phone have a single button for DND, so these are the phones that may pose problems as how do you program the single button for a 2 function toggle code (*60/*61) to be sent to the system?

I think you hit it with the comment -
My users get confused and sometimes set DND and Out of Office... and come back and set Available but do not undo DND - and wonder why they don't get calls.

DND is a valid condition when set to available. So why are they setting DND and Out of Office is the real question? If using the current release of the softphone both conditions are shown to them. I think most hard phones that have the functionality also show the DND condition on the display.....but of course not the presence status. If using the dial code, then probably no indication is provided.

However, you do raise a good point - I wonder why DND is possible when set to anything other than available? Also, because it is currently possible, then assume that the call handling is different for DND and out-of-office, which takes precedence? I had never thought to test this.

However, this issue then raises further questions about how calls are handled when the call is a function of a ring group or a Q and not directed to an extension as a direct call In this case the presence is ignored and DND is observed. I have users who use both so that the presence will tell others their true status and the DND will force the ring group call to bypass their extension. With a Q - agent login & out, presence and DND. In any event, in the ring group scenario, the DND takes care of group generated calls and the presence status handles direct calls.

Once explained most will pick it up and some perhaps never. I don't know that there is one correct answer.....so good luck.