Needing Advice

[Gondore]

I am hoping to pick the communities brain. I have a problem that I have been trying to deal with for quite some time and have found no great solution. I run a logistics company and we have Dispatchers who are on-call 24/7. In order to help provide a better work/life balance for these individuals I would like to rotate the call order from week to week. So, for example I have employee 1, employee 2, and employee 3. On week 1 I want employee 1 to get calls first after hours, and then if they don't answer it moves to employee 2, and then to employee 3. I am currently using a Ring Group that activates after business owners to try and accomplish this. Each Dispatcher has a mobile device with the 3CX mobile app installed on it. I utilized the Prioritized Hunt and change the order manually on a weekly basis. Overall, this seems to work, but many times my Dispatchers will miss calls and claim that their phone never rang. At this point I have no way to track this. I have tried to use the Ring Group Statistics report, but it doesn't seem to work in this scenario. I do know that the mobile app is far from perfect and does have issues (not sure if anyone else is struggling with the mobile app), but also the reports don't seem to give additional insights into what is going on, specifically when a call is being dropped by the mobile app. If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve upon this solution, I would very much like to hear them as I have been trying to deal with this issue for over a year.

 

[CentrexJ]

Use a queue and the poll strategy can also be leveraged to make the calls fair for the employees. Also reporting for queues is better.

If you aren’t on pro or enterprise get your 3CX partner to give you a temporary proof of concept upgrade so you can try the pro queue features to confirm it meets your needs.

 

[Gondore]

Use a queue and the poll strategy can also be leveraged to make the calls fair for the employees. Also reporting for queues is better.

If you aren’t on pro or enterprise get your 3CX partner to give you a temporary proof of concept upgrade so you can try the pro queue features to confirm it meets your needs.

The problem with this is that the Dispatchers would have to log into and out of the queue. This is more work on their part and they are likely to forget. If you have a suggestion on how to setup queues were this isn't the case, please let me know.

 

[SweetAction]

If you are open to 3rd party solutions/integrations, VOIPTools has an on call manager solution.

Ring Groups and Queues both have issues in this case, starting with someone needs to do manual actions (re-arrange orders, q in, etc)

You could also take the "ring my mobile simultaneously" approach.

As for what happened, you should be able to run the report "Call Report" and see what happened to a call.

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

I'll have to agree that using Call Queues instead of Ring Groups here would probably the better option. Queues have more specialized reports and generally offer more options you can adjust to suite your needs.

The problem with this is that the Dispatchers would have to log into and out of the queue.

If they have specific working hours you can automate login/logout by enabling profile status autoswitching and have "Do not Disturb" log them out of the Queue.

 

[VoIPTools]

I encourage you to take a look at our 3CX On Call Manager tool. We support both live answer and the legacy "leave a voicemail and get a call back" approach. We offer a web-based calendar that supports rotating schedules too. We also support escalation. You can have up to 30 levels of escalation with multiple people in each level. We also include full logging of when the call came in, who was notified, and how they were notified (by phone, email, and SMS text), and logging of the resolution of the request (updated by the agent via the web portal).

 

[Gondore]

If you are open to 3rd party solutions/integrations, VOIPTools has an on call manager solution.

Ring Groups and Queues both have issues in this case, starting with someone needs to do manual actions (re-arrange orders, q in, etc)

You could also take the "ring my mobile simultaneously" approach.

As for what happened, you should be able to run the report "Call Report" and see what happened to a call.

I will look at the 3rd party solution.

The Call Report does not show it going through people in the Ring Group. For example, if it cannot reach one of the extensions, it doesn't show this. The report just shows if someone picked up and if so, what extension it was. I have no way of knowing if an extension was really called and if it failed in this setup.

 

[SweetAction]

The report won't show ringing to people, but it should show why the call goes to "Destination No Answer".

 

[Gondore]

The report won't show ringing to people, but it should show why the call goes to "Destination No Answer".

Could the report be modified to show when it tries to contact a mobile extension and fails or succeeds but nobody answers it?

 

[Gondore]

Bump

 

[Evolute IT]

Could the report be modified to show when it tries to contact a mobile extension and fails or succeeds but nobody answers it?

I do not believe so. You will see who was tried as extensions but nothing more.

 

[Gondore]

I do not believe so. You will see who was tried as extensions but nothing more.

It doesn't even show the mobile extensions that it has tried if it fails or they don't answer....it only seems to show answered ones. So for example if I have Person 1, Person 2 and Person 3 in a Ring Group in a Prioritized Hunt if it goes through Person 1, Person 2 and Person 3 finally answers, it will just show Person 3 Answered on the report.

 

[Evolute IT]

It doesn't even show the mobile extensions that it has tried if it fails or they don't answer....it only seems to show answered ones. So for example if I have Person 1, Person 2 and Person 3 in a Ring Group in a Prioritized Hunt if it goes through Person 1, Person 2 and Person 3 finally answers, it will just show Person 3 Answered on the report.

In a ring group, that would make sense. A queue would probably show each polled users.

Also, "mobile extensions", do you mean a user with the mobile app or someone with forwarding to cellphone enabled?

 

[Gondore]

In a ring group, that would make sense. A queue would probably show each polled users.

Also, "mobile extensions", do you mean a user with the mobile app or someone with forwarding to cellphone enabled?

When I say "mobile extension" it's someone with a regular extension but they have the 3CX mobile app on their cellphones.

 

[Evolute IT]

When I say "mobile extension" it's someone with a regular extension but they have the 3CX mobile app on their cellphones.

Okay well it's just an extension in this case. Whether it's mobile or not doesn't matter.

 

[Gondore]

Okay well it's just an extension in this case. Whether it's mobile or not doesn't matter.

Yes, I figured the system treated it just like a regular extension, this is why I thought the system should have showed it in the Call report.

 

[Evolute IT]

Yes, I figured the system treated it just like a regular extension, this is why I thought the system should have showed it in the Call report.

The call report will not show what you want. You should look at the Ring Groups reports or just using queues instead, which gives more control and reporting.

 

[Gondore]

The call report will not show what you want. You should look at the Ring Groups reports or just using queues instead, which gives more control and reporting.

The Ring Group report doesn't show anything....it's always empty for some reason. I cannot use Queues because this requires my Dispatchers having login and logout from the Queue and they would forget to do this all the time. I think the 3rd party option may be the only reasonable solution.

 

[CentrexJ]

You can automate queue logon times for each user and don’t show them how to do it manually. We have many customers who do this.

 

[Evolute IT]

The Ring Group report doesn't show anything....it's always empty for some reason. I cannot use Queues because this requires my Dispatchers having login and logout from the Queue and they would forget to do this all the time. I think the 3rd party option may be the only reasonable solution.

Why would they need to login/logout? If they are permanently in a ring group, just have them in a queue and don't tell them how to logout?

As for the RG report, that's interesting that it's empty.