Blind Transfer to Voicemail

Hello, this is likely more of a Yealink question then a FreePBX question but there are a lot of smart people here and a lot of Yealink users.

We have a lot of extensions and a phone expansion with 40 BLF keys for all of the employees.
The receptionist does mostly attended transfers and blind transfers to voicemail. I would like her to be able to always use the BLF keys and not have to type in the extension every time.

In a perfect world this is how it would work:

Answers call > presses transfer > selects BLF > talks to employee > presses transfer >complete
This works when the yealink has “Transfer Mode via Dsskey” set to attended transfer.

Answers call (knows that the employee has gone home) > presses transfer > presses “To Voicemail” DSS key > presses BLF > blind transfer complete
This works when I have “Transfer Mode via Dsskey” set to blind transfer and the “To Voicemail” DSS key set as prefix with a value of *

I cannot make both work. I have tried DTMF ##* BLF and all sorts of other combinations with no luck.

Try Setting the key type to DTMF with value of ##* . On my system all I have to do is press the VM button (Line key with DTMF ##* set) and then press the ext. BLF button or enter the extension. The transfer happens immediately. I also added ##*xxx under the “dial now” dial plan. DSS Transfer is set to Blind. I haven’t tried this with DSS key set to attended bc we do not do attended transfers.

Here’s my config…

transfer.on_hook_trans_enable = 0
transfer.semi_attend_tran_enable = 1
transfer.blind_tran_on_hook_enable = 1
transfer.tran_others_after_conf_enable = 0
dialnow.item.1 = ##*xxx
features.dtmf.hide = 1
features.dtmf.hide_delay = 1
features.play_local_dtmf_tone_enable = 0
phone_setting.inter_digit_time = 4

That was one of the things that I tried and I just tried it again matching your settings.
When I press the VM button (DTMF ##*) I start to hear transfer and then it is cut short. I press the BLF, that extension never rings and I get “recall” on the operators phone of the original caller

If I dial the extension instead of pressing the BLF it works

Maybe its hitting the interdigit timeout? How are you transferring? While on an active call you should just need to press the line key assigned ##* and then the BLF key. I would also check your dial rules. I have ##*xxx setup as a dial now rule (This is for 3 digit extensions)

I am trying to transfer by pressing the ##* DTMF button and then the BLF and that is when I get the ring back. What software version are you using in your phones?

I digress!!! It is NOT working for me. I might be losing my mind but i’m almost positive this was working before. Funny thing is it acts totally different using asterisk 13. No ring back but just transfers the call to the extension instead of the voice mail. I did notice this message in the logs

Extension ‘*’ does not exist in context ‘from-internal-xfer’