I have a FreePBX licensed On-Premise at one of our clients.
We have 2 phones at the front desk. One was a FreePBX extension that receives calls from 2 elevators that use FXS Grandstreams. We had that specific phone/extension set to always auto answer. Worked great. The front desk had a second phone for all business, main building phone line, etc. that was with Nextiva under an old contract.
Long story short, Nextiva contract expired, Nextiva account canceled and numbers ported to Sipstation to be incorporated into the existing FreePBX system. So we now just have the 1 FreePBX extension/phone at the front desk.
Can I get this FreePBX front desk phone/extension to auto answer ONLY when the elevator extensions call the front desk extension…
So, for simplicity, when FreePBX Elevator extensions 101 and 102 call the FreePBX Front Desk Extension 100, the front desk phone auto answers… But when anyone else calls the Front Desk Phone it rings as normal…
If the front desk phone has multiple line keys, assign it a second extension that auto-answers and is called by the elevator phones.
Or, have the elevator phones dial *80100 (assuming that your intercom prefix is *80).
Or, have the elevator phones dial a Ring Group with the proper Alert-Info.
However, you should consider what happens if the front desk attendant is on break, in the restroom, etc. If the elevator phones are not used frivolously, you could route to emergency services if the front desk doesn’t answer quickly. If you’re concerned about false emergency calls, consider routing to your alarm company’s monitoring service.
It does have multiple line keys. *80100 is probably the easiest option.
I dont have any concerns about front desk staff not answering phone. I went over all this with my client 3yr ago when pots lined from telecom were being shut down and they asked us to switch them to VOIP.
They have written orders to us to have elevators call front desk phone like they have always done. They dont want them calling anywhere else against our recommendations.
One thing we have done this week when porting their Nextiva DID’s to the single FreePBX front desk phone (Snom D785) is we added a Snom M900 to the lobby that covers the entire lobby area, bathrooms, elevator area and back lobby (everywhere the front desk staff goes) paired with a Snom M80 cordless.
The D785 and M80 are in a ring group that rings when anyone calls the front desk line. So when the desk staff walks away from the front desk, they will now take the cordless