Using Windows phone solely as presence indicator?

[rshores]

Our client wants an easy way to put the phone system in "In Office" or "Out of Office" mode. What we've come up with will work, but I'm trying to find a more straightforward way.

What we've got set up now is 2 different computers with the soft-phone installed, provisioned to a dummy extension. The statuses of the dummy extension govern how calls are routed. When the dummy extension is available (any green status in the softphone), calls are routed (after 1 second) to the receptionist. When the dummy extension is unavailable (any red or orange status in the softphone), calls are routed to the "We're not available" IVR.

While this is functional, it's not as polished as we'd like. Does anyone else have any ideas on how we could do this? My original thought was to duplicate the command sent by the softphone client to the 3CX server, but I can't find the command to send. Even loaded WireShark and looked at individual packets, to no avail.

Am I missing something? Has anyone tried this before?

Thx!

 

[robxbl69]

Can't they use dial codes? *641 and *642 ?

The 64 could be replaced with something else of your choosing.

See settings/advanced/dial codes

Rob

 

[ian.watts]

This. I used an "emergency code". <code>0 follows rules, 1 forces in-hours, 2 forces after-hours.
Can be done on a handset, Windows softphone, or Android softphone.

Hmm.. Maybe it would work by remote dial-in? That'd be bad.. Nope.. didn't work. Whew.

 

[livn46]

This sounds like the definition of a call queue. Have the receptionist be the only member of a call queue, and have the queue's "destination if no answer" be the "we're not available" IVR. If the receptionist is logged into the queue, they receive the call, if not, it goes to the IVR.