Shared Parking, Dial Code, and BLF (Cisco)

[TSlocum]

We've got Cisco SPA514G phones with the BLF sidecar. I've set some of them to shared park spots 1-4.

If I blind transfer and then press one of the spots, it lights up and the call is placed in the spot. I can press the button again and pick it back up. But, I can't dial *11 to pick up spot 1 if I used the sidecar. It gives me "Invalid number."

The same thing happens in reverse: If I blind transfer and dial *01, it will park the call, but the BLF won't light up, and I can't use it to pick up the parked call. I can dial *11 and it will pick it up.

How can I get this to work consistently?

 

[craigreilly]

Shared Parks (SPx) are not the same as Dial Code (*) parks.

 

[TSlocum]

That's just confusing, in my opinion.

Is there any way to access a Shared Park without a BLF? For example, on a phone without a sidecar?

 

[craigreilly]

I have phones without Sidecars - but still have BLF's.
The dial code version was available first. But I do not think you can monitor the dial-code parks. So, they came up with the Shared Parks (which is available in old key systems) as an alternative. In my opinion an easier way to Manage parks.
They left the old version for phones that can not support SP or users that wanted to stick with the dial-codes.

Phones with BLF's:
Grandstream 2160 has 24, 2130 has 8
Yealink T46 has 30, T38 has 10

 

[TSlocum]

Is there any way to access a Shared Park without a BLF?

 

[craigreilly]

You can create a dummy extension, then making the extension always call "an outside number" and enter the SPx as the number (SP0, SP1) (under Forwarding Rules)

Then to park - Blind transfer to ie: 7001 (SP1)
to pickup just dial 7001 (SP1)

It does work - but there is a caveat.

Call 1 is transferred to 7001. It is now "Parked"
Call 2 is transferred to 7001. They are now connected to each other instead of both being Parked.
The BLFs are good for monitoring an empty slot.

 

[TSlocum]

That worked. Thank you.

 

[DSchuster]

I have Polycom Sound Point IP 335 phone and could not get the shared parking to work, but by doing the above it worked. Just adding the extension's and have them forward to the shared parking (SP0). Now all the users have to do is answer the call press the transfer button and dial the shared parking extension and transfer the call then if the call is not answered in the set amount of time it will ring back to them. We were using Call Parking but calls would get parked and no one would know if the call ever got picked up and callers complained about being on hold for up to 20 minutes and hang up, this way they are never on hold for more than the set time before it rings back to the users. Thank you so much for this post it saved me and 3CX at that facility. If I would have not found this the owners were going to pull it out and go with something different.

Thank you.

 

[TA Stewart]

I tried this but the forward to number requires a valid outside number. "*01 Invalid Outside Number"

 

[jbryant84]

Fwiw with SPA cisco phones without a sidecar you can set two BLFs and it will use the bottom two buttons next to the screen.