How to handle "transfer to voicemail" on Cisco SPA509g / SPA500S / SPA5xx phones

Any suggestions/references/help configuring “transfer to voicemail” on these phones would be much appreciated. So far I’ve read the Cisco admin guides, any vaguely related posts on either the FreePBX, PIAf and Asterisk forums … and more (even a dated Cisco guide for configuring the SAP500S in Asterisk) - see references at bottom. I’m just am not getting it.

Only the reception phone has the SPA500S expansion module - but they all would like the feature.

Also I’m not sure how this mechanically should work for the user? Is there a soft key that will display similar to the regular “xfer” or is it going to be a line key that get’s programmed - i.e. you press it and then key in the extension number?

A 3CX softphone connected to their system can transfer to voicemail using this sequence - ##*nnnn - then immediately hangup. I had hoped that would work as a temporary workaround on the SPA509G’s but no luck.

The dial plan being pushed out from EPM is the default:

(*x.|**xx|[3469]11|0|00|[2-9]xxxxxx|1xxx[2-9]xxxxxxS0|xxxxxxxxxxxx.)

Background:

We’ve just moved this office with 19 Cisco SPA509G phones from Ring Central to the latest FreePBX Distro (6.12.65-26) - with the commercial EndPoint Manger and System Admin modules

Overall it’s gone smoothly. The “but” or “except for” part is understanding how to do a few of the shortcuts they need

We’ve never used the Cisco SPA phones before - either using ATA’s with cordless phones (customers love them) or Digium D40/D50 phones and the FreePBX Digium Phone module.

On the standalone SPA509G phones in each office we’ve got the 12 line keys configured - the first two are “line” keys, the remaining 10 provide one-touch access and monitoring of a chosen set of extensions.

On the SPA509G with the attached SPA500S expansion we’ve configured the line keys on the SPA500S.

Both of these configurations seem to work fine - the expected soft key labels show up, etc.

This all works.

BTW, on a 3CX softphone I can transfer to voicemail using this sequence - ##*nnnn - then immediately hangup. I had hoped that would work as a temporary workaround on the SPA509G’s but no luck.

Here are some references that seemed promising, but did not work:

http://community.freepbx.org/t/transfer-to-voicemail/14936

http://community.freepbx.org/t/direct-transfer-to-voicemail-polycom-and-cisco/18886

http://pbxinaflash.com/community/index.php?threads/unable-to-transfer-to-voicemail.2310/

Thanks in advance, all ideas/help appreciated - Richard

Hi Richard,

Try just using *nnnn as the destination, and looking up “blind transfer $modelnumber”.

@Overkill thanks, it sounds like its worth a try but … I’m a bit hazy on where I should be looking up “blind transfer $modelnumber”.

I’ve looked in the basefiles, spa.xml files, Cisco SPA500 admin guide and googled - no joy.

On our polycom phones, transfer softkey ==> blind softkey ==> *ext works beautifully.

1 Like

@Overkill - thanks that worked. It’s slight different on the Cisco SPA5xx, there’s a dedicated “blind transfer” key - just need to put the * before the extension to make it go straight to voicemail:

[bxfer]==>*nnnn==>[dial]

Thank you much!

@rnmixon you’re welcome! :smile: