This is a very minor issue.
We’ve moved our conference bridges from another service to FreePBX and it works well. We have an IVR set up for all callers (internal and external) to enter the conference bridge number. The part that confuses people off is that other services have you enter a number and # after it to enter the conference bridge (ex: 1234#). I’ve looked all over at settings and can’t find anything that does that.
Is there a way to do the same thing in FreePBX?
Thanks.
Our corporate overlords have a system called Conferencing Pro that does this.
If that’s not how you want to go, you can program an IVR or context to do the front-end and have it pass control to the specific conference rooms.
I can look at the Conferencing Pro module.
I’m not sure what you mean in the second sentence. Just to be clear - I just want the choice in the IVR to work with or without a # at the end. I had used Trixbox a years ago and I thought that the # cut short the delay after pressing keys, but not positive.
I did just test our IVR to have “1234#” as an option, which worked. I guess I could have both - “1234” and “1234#” so it would work either way. It’s rather hokey, but it works.
The “#” key did cause immediate dialing, but in my experience that’s a feature of the phone more than the IVR.
A LOT has changed in the IVR module since TrixBox. For example, in order to direct dial extensions, they have to now be identified correctly in the system. For example, unless you specify the options correctly, I don’t think you can direct-dial voicemail anymore from the IVR. So, as you’re programming your IVR, you can set up the conference rooms in a directory and allow those to be direct dialed. I don’t know if the new conference module ‘allows’ (which may not be the right word) the use of the “#” as a terminus character any more, since “#” is now a dialable option in the IVR.
I don’t deal with a lot of IVRs, so I don’t know all of the ins and outs of using them. I’m sure one of the more experience IVR Wizards might be able to tell you how to accomplish what you’re trying to do.
To be clear - you can write a context for your IVR number that says “Conference Room followed by a pound sign”, interrogate the variable, check against your list of valid conference rooms, and drops you into that Conference Room. It’s not a particularly challenging code set - you could probably use the code I wrote for the TimeTrex program as a template and then, instead of jumping to the TimeTrex code, dial the conference room number.
At this point, you can spend 20 minutes setting up and IVR and have to modify that code everytime you want to use it, or spend an hour getting a custom context working that you’ll never (theoretically) have to mess with again.
Of course, as I mentioned originally, you could also just use the Conferencing Pro module that Sangoma sells to do it once. It all depends on how much your time is worth.
I’ll look into the Conferencing Pro module as that’s probably the easiest and cheapest route. Thanks for your help!
This topic was automatically closed 31 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.