My company has recently purchased a FreePBX based appliance and as the systems developer and general tech person, it’s up to me to configure it. I’m having problems with General Call Pickup (as opposed to ** Directed Call Pickup). The feature is enabled according to both the web UI and the features.conf file as using *8. I have also ensured that all extensions are in the same callgroup and pickup group. Further more, I have tried using alternative feature numbers, e.g. 88 for general call pickup and 66 for directed call pickup. With these alternatives, directed call pickup continues to work, but general call pickup does not.
We are based in the UK so have ISDN30 from BT (8 channels, 30 extensions/DDIs, fractional E1). The behaviour I am seeing at present is as follows (given phones A, B and C):
A calls B. C tries to pick up B by dialling *8 (and *8# just in case). When C dials *8, the timer on the phone begins, indicative of an initiated call. At the same time, B stops ringing. However, A does not connect to C; A continues to ring. If I hang up A then C terminates, and similarly if I hang up C, then A terminates. It’s almost like it’s ‘partly’ working, but transfer of the call doesn’t work properly.
We are using Aastra 9133i phones, and the default local dial-plan supplied with these phones. I don’t believe the local dial plan is at fault, because I can do e.g. **XXXX to do a directed pickup of extension XXXX, so the *s are being interpreted correctly.
The asterisk logs (tail -f /var/log/asterisk/full and asterisk -r -vvvv) don’t mention extension C at all; there are only mentions of extension A and B. I am not at work at the moment so can’t provide logs at the moment, but any suggestions or pointers would be most welcome. I will be at work from 09:00 GMT so can post more detailed log output at that time.
Many Thanks,
Max