System Operator per group

[Renier van der Westhuizen]

Good Day

Our school group has approximately 90 school Campuses (This includes Preschool, Primary and High school) which all have their own Receptionists. At the moment on 3CX you can only assign a system wide operator.

Can we request a feature to allow the administrator to assign a operator per group?

When reaching a voicemail it states to press * to speak to the operator. This becomes difficult to manage with 80000 learner's parents/guardians phoning in and possibly reaching voicemail and pressing *

If rather by pressing * the system sends the call to the group's operator.

Regards

Curro VoIP Team

 

[N_G]

Hi there, and these are all on one system? How many users does the system have

 

[Renier van der Westhuizen]

Hi Ni

Hi there, and these are all on one system? How many users does the system have

Hi Nick , currently its mainly just SIP phone extension and a few users. We have moved 40 campuses over to 3CX this years from AudioCodes/Teams. We have another 20 Sites lined up. The rest are on different platforms but the plan is to get them all on one platform. currently we have a 1000 extensions and counting, I think when we done it will be around 2000 extensions. So not that many , as a campus can have 10-35 phones.

Regards

 

[N_G]

I didnt understand is it a 1000 extensions or just a few users? Any case right now there is only one system operator per system unfortunately.

Moved over from Teams you mean they are now using 3CX client or still teams client?

 

[Renier van der Westhuizen]

I didnt understand is it a 1000 extensions or just a few users? Any case right now there is only one system operator per system unfortunately.

Moved over from Teams you mean they are now using 3CX client or still teams client?

1000 extensions that includes a few users.

We used Skype for business AudioCodes phones(405HD,445HD) that were compatible with Teams. We have flashed the firmware to Generic SIP and registered them to 3CX.

Thanks for the feedback Nick , hopefully this can be looked at in the future.

Regards
Renier

 

[N_G]

Sorry to ask but what do you mean 1000 extensions that includes a few users? Would that not be 1000 users then at least?

Its an interesting use case and how we can host multiple schools on one big install so am keen to understand....

 

[VoIPTools]

My apologies for jumping into the middle of the conversation with a suggestion.

You could create a dummy user and assign that extension as the system-wide operator. When a caller is routed to the operator, the operator extension could forward all calls to a CFD. The CFD could look at where the caller was coming from to determine which school, then forward to the assigned operator for that location.

Naturally, you would need to maintain an 3CX Group / Operator table (Group = location) to know which operator should receive the call, but I think this would be reasonably straightforward to implement.

 

[N_G]

Thats a good suggestion Matthew, thanks

 

[SweetAction]

On a similar vein we've set an AA as the system operator, with choices presented to the user to select which Operator they are trying to reach. But Matthew's way is a bit cleaner, if you can run CFD's

 

[Renier van der Westhuizen]

Hi Nick , yes sorry.

Sorry to ask but what do you mean 1000 extensions that includes a few users? Would that not be 1000 users then at least?

Its an interesting use case and how we can host multiple schools on one big install so am keen to understand....

Sorry I'm familiar with saying Extensions and Users. You are correct 1000 Users, some on Webclient and some on IP Phones.

 

[Renier van der Westhuizen]

My apologies for jumping into the middle of the conversation with a suggestion.

You could create a dummy user and assign that extension as the system-wide operator. When a caller is routed to the operator, the operator extension could forward all calls to a CFD. The CFD could look at where the caller was coming from to determine which school, then forward to the assigned operator for that location.

Naturally, you would need to maintain an 3CX Group / Operator table (Group = location) to know which operator should receive the call, but I think this would be reasonably straightforward to implement.

Thanks Matthew , We will definitely look into this. So basically a caller presses * to speak to operator, CFD checks which number was initially dialed by the caller and send it to that school's reception? Do I have it correct?

 

[VoIPTools]

I've been pondering your question. I have a number of thoughts:

• For inbound calls, assuming you can always reliably get the DID the caller dialed, yes, that would work
  
  
• Another approach could be to look at where the caller was transferred from. That would typically be a queue right? My assumption is that you would have unique queues for each location. Knowing where the caller came from should identify which school they were trying to contact. Based on that, you would route accordingly.
  
  
• If someone dials 0 from an IVR, you have complete control over where the call is routed (provided the IVR is unique to a location)
  
  
• If the caller is coming from voicemail, routing based on transferred extension might be problematic. Some testing would be required.
  
  
• Regardless of how you implement the routing decisions, you are going to have to expend some effort to maintain a routing table.
  
  
• Maybe you could use extension ranges for each location and use the extension number to make the routing decision? You have a lot of schools and extensions so anything you can do to have the CFD make the routing decision rather than looking up in a user-maintained list would be desirable.
  
  
• Let us not forget than an internal extension could, in theory, also end up at an operator so using the number the caller dialed probably only works for inbound external calls.
  
  
• Finally, you should always have a default route if the location cannot be determined (for example a database lookup error).

As always, the deeper you dive into a solution the more complicated things become.

 

[Renier van der Westhuizen]

I've been pondering your question. I have a number of thoughts:

• For inbound calls, assuming you can always reliably get the DID the caller dialed, yes, that would work
  
  
• Another approach could be to look at where the caller was transferred from. That would typically be a queue right? My assumption is that you would have unique queues for each location. Knowing where the caller came from should identify which school they were trying to contact. Based on that, you would route accordingly.
  
  
• If someone dials 0 from an IVR, you have complete control over where the call is routed (provided the IVR is unique to a location)
  
  
• If the caller is coming from voicemail, routing based on transferred extension might be problematic. Some testing would be required.
  
  
• Regardless of how you implement the routing decisions, you are going to have to expend some effort to maintain a routing table.
  
  
• Maybe you could use extension ranges for each location and use the extension number to make the routing decision? You have a lot of schools and extensions so anything you can do to have the CFD make the routing decision rather than looking up in a user-maintained list would be desirable.
  
  
• Let us not forget than an internal extension could, in theory, also end up at an operator so using the number the caller dialed probably only works for inbound external calls.
  
  
• Finally, you should always have a default route if the location cannot be determined (for example a database lookup error).

As always, the deeper you dive into a solution the more complicated things become.

Hi Matthew

Thanks for the thoughts and suggestions. I'm quite new to 3CX so haven't really had the time to invest in CFD just yet. We are still busy migrating our schools to 3CX which keeps us quite busy. Luckily we like to have things structured so we did create dedicated extension ranges per school in groups of 200 and we manage that on a spreadsheet so we have a "database" that wont really change much. Currently we have a main DID assigned to a group(School), group routes to Digital receptionist, option 1 routes to Call queue(for receptions). Normal extensions like marketing/finance routes directly to extension. Outgoing Caller ID for the whole school is the same for parent to save only one number as spam calling is a big problem in South Africa.

I agree, things can get complicated quickly. And needs are so different from company to company.