Hold early callers to conference calls

[Random1]

A client of ours is running v11 and needs to know if there is a way to place callers on hold if they call early to a conference call i.e. before the room is created or before the initiator is online?

This is quite a big issue for them as they will need to pay for external conference hosting if this cannot be achieved in some way.

For example could callers be placed in a queue with hold music till the conference room is ready/created.

 

[ppickens]

Honestly, there's no way that I know of. It would seem to me that the only way to accomplish this is to have everyone go to the receptionist, who can put them on hold with the spare lines on their phone (like in the yealink T38, they could effectively have 5 lines on hold). But the way the conferencing is set up, it boots anybody that doesn't have the conference setup password before one is set up.

 

[jasit]

the way that we get around this is as follows.

When you create the meeting room, set the time for 10 - 15 minutes earlier then when the meeting is suppose to start.
only invite the host of the meeting.

When the host of the meeting gets the invite, they can then add the attendies,using their outlook email address book and they can also change the start time and the end time of the meeting (3cx defaults the end time to be the same time as the start).

 

[rjsoderlund]

This needs to be re-visited.

My employees get notified constantly by the parties joining the conf calls "sorry, your phone system was down, that's why I was late, it just hung up on me."

Our CEO has expressed the need to have this be addressed as well. People need to be able to dial in 2-3 minutes early to a call. Everyone is tired of explaining how the system doesn't let anyone in early at the start of every call.

 

[jasit]

my biggest complaint about the conference system is that the receptionist should be able to transfer someone into a current conference call without needed to know the id.


as I said before, if the host of the conference sets up the conference 5 - 10 minutes in advance and then uses outlook to send out the notifications themselves, it works.