Call Parking Slot announcement issue

General Help
21

I have a Elastix customer that I recently upgraded, which from what I can tell, asterisk 1.6 to 1.8 broke this and I am in the same boat as the rest of you. My customer uses parking ALOT, and they are getting annoyed by the fact that their customers get to hear a parking announcement for no reason… I hope someone finds a solution here, that doesnt include recompiling, etc.

This occurs on Yealink T28P’s

22

This is still an issue on Snom 821s. Any resolution? We can place the call on hold, call the parking lot, and then transfer, but every other way reads the slot to the caller, not to the parker.

23

If I had to guess, I’d guess that this is an issue with the way your phone is handling the park operation. If your phone is conferencing the caller to extension 70 when you hit park, and not including you in the conference, then you’d experience exactly what you’re describing.

I use Aastra phones and have not experienced this problem.

Have you tried manually executing a call transfer to extension 70, either by hitting “transfer” and then 70, or by using the asterisk call transfer feature code?

24

Hi everyone

After months of trying to resolve this I’ve now hit a brick wall. Using the latest FreePBX Distro build - 1.86.29.55, I can replicate this issue consistently.

Here is my set up:

Install - FreePBX Distro 1.86.29.55 (this uses FreePBX 2.9.0.7, and Asterisk 1.8.6.0)

I’ve configured trunks, inbound and outbound routes etc., everything that’s required for a PBX and everything works as expected - aside from Call Parking.

GUI configuration aside, the only other changes have been the inclusion of a folder of UK English sounds in /var/lib/asterisk/sounds, which I’ve named en_GB and included in SIP Settings/Other SIP Settings as ‘language=en_GB’. This plays UK English instead of US English and works with no problems.

I’ve tested using Snom 320’s and Yealink T28P handsets, and both display the same issue, which I’ve outlined below.

Snom 320

  1. External caller rings into the PBX.
  2. One of the phones rings and is answered.
  3. The person that answered the call presses the Function Key button thats mapped to Park & Orbit and the caller is parked in the next available parking slot.
  4. The caller (the person ringing in) hears the parking slot announcement before the MoH kicks in. This is not how it should be.

Yealink T28P

  1. External caller rings into the PBX.
  2. One of the phones rings and is answered.
  3. The person that answered the call presses the DSS Key thats mapped to Call Park and the caller is parked in the next available parking slot.
  4. The caller (the person ringing in) hears the parking slot announcement before the MoH kicks in. This is not how it should be.

Attempted Solutions

  1. I’ve tried changing the parking slot from 700 to 70 and Call Park still works, however, the slot announcement is STILL played to the caller, NOT the recipient.
  2. Renaming the digits folder in /var/lib/asterisk/sounds to digits.old so the PBX couldn’t use them. This generated no errors, but was not ideal as no extension numbers were read out when dialling into voicemail etc.
  3. Manually transferring to the Call Park extension using the built-in Feature Codes - the slot announcement is still played to the caller.

As stated earlier, I’ve now hit a brick wall with this, and quite frankly would love to know how Tony C Lewis has managed to try 50 different ways and not replicate this issue - perhaps I’m configuring something catastrophically incorrect? I find this hard to believe as several other people have also indicated the same issue in this thread.

I therefore propose that a bug report be raised, unless someone has found a solution but hasn’t yet shared?

Any help or advice MUCH appreciated :slight_smile:

TIA

BR

25

Have you tried to simple dial ##70# or ##700# for whatever you have setup for park. Than try to just use the transfer key and transfer the call to 70 or 700 as a blind transfer.

26

Your explanation seems to support my theory that the problem is with how the endpoint handles the park operation.

As I suggested, you should try doing the transfer manually, by hitting tranfer, dialing 70, and then completing the transfer, or by using the ## feature code, i.e. ##70# to transfer the call to the parking lot, as Tony suggested.

27

I have this exact issue. I am using Yealink T28s and have no need to hear the announcement since I am using the Call Park feature.

It would seem there should be a place to turn it off which also (I am hoping) would speed up the transfer.

28

We use the freepbx distro and are having trouble finding the features.c file to comment out the park announce voice. Is there another way to accomplish this or am I looking in the wrong place?

29

The source code is not included in the distro, you would have to download from Digium and recompile. You would not be able to update the distro automatically if you do this.

30

That is what we concluded but we were looking for some method to deal with this parking lot announce issue. It looks to me like there are some upgrades that we can perform. Is there a place where I can read what the newest upgrades have fixed. Specifically is there anything in a more current release that will fix this park announce issue? IDEALLY to just turn off the announce…

31

Hi Tony

Thanks for your response.

We configured the Snom 320 phones as the following:

Function Keys
P1 Active DTMF ##70#

  • instead of -

Function keys
P1 Active Park+Orbit 70 (this changes to sip:[email protected];user=phone once applied)

When configured with ##70#, this works but is a bit of a fudge, purely because if the user replaces the handset before the DTMF has completed it seems to cause issues, such as not parking and channels held open. Therefore it is far from ideal and not a route we wish to go down permanently.

I’ve gone as far as I can go now with testing, and would appreciate (as I’m sure all of the other users on this thread that are expressing similar issues) someone from the FreepBX developer team to investigate this further, as the problem is very easily replicated.

If anyone can shed any light on a solution it would be appreciated.

TIA

BR

32

BR - I need to understand what you are looking from the team?

This is an Asterisk/SNOM issue? How can FreePBX help?

33

Hi SkykingOH

Thanks for the response.

I guess what I, and the other users that have identified this issue are looking for is some advice on where we go next. As this was tested and proved to be an issue with the latest FreePBX Distro 1.86.29.55, I thought it may be the FreePBX team we needed to approach. If however you feel it’s an Asterisk issue then I’ll raise it with them. I’ll also contact Snom and Yealink to see if they have knowledge of this issue.

Thanks again

BR

34

Yes, the FreePBX team does not touch the Asterisk code. The few patches that have been submitted by team members have been a struggle to get included into release versions.

From a resource standpoint I can’t imaging anyone would want to get in the middle of an issue.

Realize I don’t speak for the team, Philippe has the final word.

35

We get this on our system - a FreePBX distro 2.9 - but it only occurs to users who are using Softphones. Our LinkSys 942 phones behave correctly. Have tested with Bria and 3CX softphones on both iPhone, Winodws and Mac all with safe result - no announcement to the internal user - its played to the caller!

36

How are you parking callers with your softphones

37

We do not use softphones. We only have the 6 T28 Yealink phones and they are at the latest firmware release .110 I believe.

Recently we have also upgraded asterisk to 1.8.7.1 and that has not helped.

Does anyone think I should attempt to try the ##70# instead? I am worried my users will hang up the phone too quickly with this method.

38

So is there any way I can remove the extension announcement entirely, while being able to keep the distro?

39

Its not a Distro problem. It is a phone problem with their orbit park for 1.8. Program a button to be ##70# and test.

40

Hi Tony

I’ve tried setting a button to DTMF ##70# but the problem is if the user hangs up the phone before the DTMF is completed it causes issues - not parking being one of them. Should it not be set to DTMF?

If this is a phone issue then you and anyone else in the FreePBX community should be able to replicate this very simply. The phones we use that are demonstrating this issue are Snom 320’s. Let me know your findings if you’re able to test.

BR