Hello, I have a client that would like to a distinctive ring for a ring group but they would like the distinctive ring to go away once the call is transferred to someone else.
If I put an Alert-Info for the ring-group to instruct the phones to ring a certain way, here is what currently happens.
The alert info works as expected when the phones in the initial ring group ring. When a call is answered and then transferred, the distinctive ring seems to stick with the original call so that each person the call is transferred to still carries the distinctive ring.
If you start to do a consultative transfer (this is using the transfer feature on aastra phone), the ring will be the default ring. If you do a blind transfer the ring will be the distinctive ring.
I was wondering if anyone had a creative solution for stripping away the Alert-Info header so that it is only applicable for the initial ringing and doesn’t carry through as the call is transferred.
In case you are wondering why they would like to do this: they have several phones all of which they would like to ring (to give several people the option of answering easily). They have a small group of people that is primarily responsible for answering the phones. The people who are not primarily responsible for answering the phones would like to know, based on the ring, if the call is just for them (i.e. someone calling them directly or a call being transferred to them) or if the call is part of the ring group that they generally ignore. I have already went through the general information with them about call-pick-up and how it might be distracting for people to have their phone ring but not be responsible for answering it–despite that, they would still like to do what I described above with their distinctive ringing.
Here is an example of a creative way to strip the alert-info, but still give a hint of a distinctive ring. So far, I’m not convinced this is the best option due to the drawbacks. I could have an initial ring group that rings for about 5 seconds with a distinctive ring. If no answer, then go to the next ring group that rings for a normal amount of time (25 secs) but send out a different Alert-Info with the default sound. The draw-backs that I can think of for this are as follows:
- the distinctive ring for the initial call would only be at the beginning of the ring
- if the person that answers the phone answers before the distinctive ring goes away, then it would not have solved the problem
- there is the added annoyance of answering the call right as the ring groups switching and getting nothing (I wouldn’t think this would happen that much but experience tells me otherwise)
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I also have a question about using a combination of dahdi lines and voip with the idea of subsidizing the dahdi lines with outgoing voip (so that more dahdi lines (but not too many) are available for incoming calls). I think I posted in the wrong place. Here is the link:
http://www.freepbx.org/forum/freepbx/installation/mix-between-dahdi-and-voip
Thanks!
Jason