How to make a disconnected extension ring 3 times before voicemail?

I have a ring group that calls a specific extension that does not have a phone hooked up… It’s working great, but we need it to RING THREE TIMES BEFORE going Voicemail. Any idea of how to set this up?

Instead of using a ring group, send the call to an Announcement of three telephone rings. Then send the call to the voicemail box you’re looking for.

Cynjut: LOL. I like that idea.

C Mariotti: I think the above suggestion is about the only way you are going to get it to work without resorting to some esoteric setup (Call a dead cell phone for 15 seconds then set voicemail as alternate destination.)

Asterisk tries to be smart and avoid unecessary waits, which is what you seem to want to do.

Out of curiosity, why do you want to do this?

Not my call on this… but the client is building a new business and staffing delays are dictating the way they have to run their business at the moment. Simply put, one IVR option is to talk to a representative and the person that would take those calls can’t start for another month+… so they want it to look like the representative exists and is just simply not available at the moment. They want it to at least ring 3 times before VM.

Thanks for reply, I just didn’t know if there was a hidden option… I am looking through the Asterisks sound files for Ring files but it doesn’t show anything… I just have to track one down or actually record a call with 3 rings.

Thanks,

Chuck

You would have to make the ring file.

You may also be able to setup a call queue. You can have it ring for 15 seconds, then failover to the voicemail. As a bonus, when the person does show up, you add the extension to the agent list and they can take calls… and you still have a call queue… (Your call is important to us. please hold and the next available agent won’t be with you…lol)

That is as wacky a request as I get from some of my clients - but I agree with Marc - a Queue would be easiest.

Thanks everyone… I went down the path of the announcement simply because i was almost done with the other suggestions were posted. I’ve basically made a 3 ring .WAV file, added it to an announcement and send to VM after. It is working perfectly. Thanks again!

You can also set up the Queue and test that to see which the customer prefers. In fact, you could let them hear the “ring group” option once so that they have some feeling for where you started. In my business, we usually include something called “The Golden Chicken” - it’s that one thing that you expect the Boss to catch onto and start helping you with the design. A well designed Golden Chicken can save you lots of hours by distracting the boss from trying to help you fix stuff that’s already working. If you give them the “ring group” option as your Golden Chicken and then guide them to select the Announcement or a Queue, you’ve given them ownership in the process of building the system by letting them “decide” which one you think is the one you’ve already chosen.

Customers like to think they were integral to the process and that you’ve considered their valuable input. Golden Chicken to the rescue!

Why not just set up a “normal” phone and turn of the ringer. That way you have nothing to do once the employee arrives.

Create a Custom Destination with a Gosub string of caller-pause,s,1, and choose a destination to follow. Then add the following to extensions_custom.conf:

[caller-pause]
exten => s,1,Noop(Entering user defined context [caller-pause] in extensions_custom.conf)
exten => s,n,Ringing
exten => s,n,Wait(9)
exten => s,n,Return