Personal Assistant / Call Screening

[Rudolf]

Hi

How would you setup the following scenario:

All calls to Director must go thru his PA (personal assistant <-- real person not digital assistant), only PA to call & transfer calls to Director.

Running v11. Bata.

I tried to do call forward to PA from Director but then PA cant call Director (A setup that worked with old Analogue system).

Any suggestions?

 

[lneblett]

How are the calls getting to the director in the first place? They have to be getting to him/her by an auto-attendant, DID or an active transfer from a person be it an operator or other. What about internal calls, are they allowed to go to the director or must they too be intercepted first? What make and model of phones are employed by both the director and the person who must screen?

There are a number of different ways, but need to understand the requirement and the environment.

 

[craigreilly]

Maybe an exception rule in Myphone for directors extension.
All calls under forwarding rules available goto admin.
But a call from admin extension goes thru.

Haven't tested this. Might also require a second extension on admin phone to accept calls from admin only.

 

[Rudolf]

Tnx for the response

Director only to get calls from PA via transfer (internal and external calls).
If you call director's extension it should forward to PA's Extension and then PA can transfer to Director.
Using Yealink T28's for Directors and PAs, Yealink T20's in rest of company.

@ craigreilly - Thanks, will look into that.

 

[lneblett]

I think Craig has a decent solution, the only question then is what happens if/when the PA is not available to take calls, such as being on vacation? Someone else will need to sit at that PA spot, or the PA extension will need to be installed on another extension, or a different exception will need to be installed into the director's phone to allow for the other extension to get through.

 

[Rudolf]

Hi

Where do you set that the call from the 'Admin / PA' can go though?

Normal forward doest allow it and Exceptions allow to block & forward but not allow.

Thanks.

 

[lneblett]

You are correct. The approach does not seem to work. It seems that the rule really wants to look for a number mask from the caller ID or once you have implemented the forwarding rules, the exception does not allow the rule to be broken, but rather offers an alternative route that differs from the defined routing for that status.

I am not sure that there is an elegant way of doing what you ask. The exception route seemed promising. I will give it some thought, but the issues I see are:

1. There is no good way to keep the director's extension from becoming known. Presumably calls will be made from that extension and this will show up in the display of the called party (internal anyway).
2. An extension is an extension is an extension and once dialed, it will ring. So, if the director has that extension, it will ring and continue to do so until such time as the PA picks it up. I assume that the PA will either have the Director's extension set as an account or have one of the DSS keys set as BLF.
3. On the PA phone, if set as an account, the phone will ring whenever dialed. If set as a BLF, it will not ring, but an indication of the ring will be visually present. This could be a problem as I assume that no one will be able to maintain a constant vigil.
4. If the PA answers the extension, it will appear as though the call was answered by the director's extension which then brings the conundrum of how one goes about transferring a call while being on the extension of interest to the same extension of interest. You would have to set the extension to be able to handle multiple calls, which can be done, but I am uncertain how it might handle calls to itself.

The main issue is how can one go about "tunneling" through to an extension when that extension has rules in place that serve to preclude the possibility.

Sorry, that I don;t have an answer, but I will poke around a bit.

 

[craigreilly]

Thinking "aloud"... this might be an option, if not the only option.

Director has 2 extensions.
1 - 100
2 - 101

Admin has 1 extension
1 - 103

All calls for 100 get "Always forwarded" to 103. Simply set the extension as AWAY and all calls forward to 103.
Admin picks up call at 103. She forwards to 101 using Attended Transfer.
When director makes a call, he calls out using 100 and 100 only. Make sure 101 is hidden from MyPhone, Phonebooks, etc.

At night it might be another story - how does the phone goto his voicemail?

On the Yealinks, we can program the DND button for ON and OFF.
We use *32 and *30. Maybe in this scenario it would be *32 (night) and *31 (day). And if you can not program your DND button, then simply having the director know these 2 codes, or set them as a speed dial.

 

[Rudolf]

Managed to do the following:

In phone provisioning I set all the Yealink T20s Dialing plan to modify the director extensions to the PA's extensions (only 3 directors numbers to modify so 3 Rules used) - Dial Plan --> Replace Rule.

For external incoming calls I will just set the DDi / DID for Director to go to PA's ext.

The Yealink T28 have no rules setup, so the PA (who has a T28) can call and transfer calls to any director.

Would be nice if 3CX can enable that a forwarded extension can be called from the extension that it is forwarded too.
Worked on allot of PABX / PBXs and that was the usual fix for the scenario, or there was a PA feature.

Thanks for the help guys!!