Maybe someone here can help me out as I have not been able to help this client understand newer phone systems don’t work like old line style phone systems anymore.
His phone system is getting calls pretty consistently during the day, and he wants his extension is each of the half dozen queues he is directing the calls to go to. This causes his phone to be ringing most of the day. Now this would be fine if he was only having to handle inbound calls, but he also has to call some of these people back. When he starts to call them back, new calls will interrupt his dialing and cause him to have to start all over, even when he reject the call.
This of course irritates him when he was used to an older system before this where he had to select a line, and he was considered off hook then, so his phone would not ring on inbound calls. Explaining that he upgraded due to needing the expanded call handling option, and that the exact same thing happens even on a cell phone doesn’t matter to him. He wants it back where if he starts dialing, an inbound call doesn’t stop what he is doing. I can’t find anything on this as the system won’t know what he is doing until the call is sent.
I’ve tried introducing him to a CTI dialer for instant dialing from his computer, wrap up timers, telling him to go DND when he needs to make calls, but he doesn’t want to use any “tricks”. He just wants it to work, and I have nothing so far. Anyone have any idea to make it so outbound dialing is not interrupted by an Inbound call?
The answer is to press DND on the handset before he starts dialling. Make it a BLF. Your suggestion to him is correct. The PBX has no idea digits are being entered, and any proposed solution introduces a level of complexity that will likely cause more problems than it’s worth later on.
This needs to be addressed in the phone, not the PABX. The Gemini AI on Google suggests looking for features like asynchronous UI or localized dialling focus lock, and listed some models it claims to have such capabilities.
With bare Asterisk, you could probably use hotline dialing to simulate this. I don’t know how easy it would be to make FreePBX handle the number input without also asking for a password.
Look all you need to do is invest some money and get a FXS gateway with as many ports as you’d like lines. You connect your SIP trunk to that and break out the “lines” onto the ports. Then you get some FXO cards that support that many ports and some FXS cards for as many phones you need to connect to the PBX. Then you do everything as DAHDi channels.
Of course you’ll have to replace all the phones with analog ones…but hey that gets you the ability to at least mimic 1 line = 1 call and give them that good ole analog work flow they love.
I mean they would have been paying 5K or higher for a keyed system anyways. This shouldn’t hurt their budget at all.
