Make park function hang up rather than play music

FreePBX Tips and Tricks
1

When parking a call, the system put the other end of the call on hold and playes them music, then it tells me the parking location and then plays me music too. Is there any way for it to drop the line after telling me the parking location, or even return to a dial tone as it’s confusing for the users, they think something else is about to happen because they are listening to hold music.

Running freepbx 2.2.1 btw.

2

Thanks for that, I checked and the aastra park function really does park the call, it shows in the CLI and it can be picked up from another xtn.

I guess something could be adjusted in the phone firmware, but it does work the way it is, so the users will just have to live with it :slight_smile:

3

You may want to refer the issue to Aastra Technical Support. Just send an e-mail with the phone model number, firmware version, Asterisk details, etc. to support-AT-aastra.com.

They are knowledgeable about their phones AND Asterisk and are fairly responsive. I give them high marks.

Good luck!

Ken

4

Dirk:

I’ve got the Aastra 57i IP telephones and was a little confused about how Call Park works.

Based upon your post, I don’t think you are ever actually PARKing the calls. You can check by getting to the Asterisk CLI and using the “show parkedcalls” command.

Asterisk’s Call Park feature involves transferring a live call to a special extension (700 on my configuration). You can do it manually by:

  1. Press XFER (places the live call on hold);
  2. Dial “700” (calls the special extension that announces the parking slot);
  3. Press XFER (completes the transfer to that slot).

Or you can use the phone’s softkey by:

  1. Press PARK (places call on hold, dials extension which announces slot)
  2. Press XFER softkey, Goodbye or End Call hardkeys (completes the transfer to that slot). Note that pressing the Drop softkey results in the call being placed on hold.

The Aastra documentation I omits the final step (press XFER or Goodbye), which leaves you listening to MOH after the announcement and means that the call never actually gets parked.

Note that it’s not feasible for the phone to do everything just by pressing PARK because there may not be a parking slot available (so a transfer may not be possible). Also the phone would have to wait for the announcement to finish before executing the XFER (how long should it wait?).

I think the answer here is just to train your users to press Goodbye after they hear the parking slot number. That makes PARK function in a logical manner.

Good luck!

Ken

5

After speaking in the IRC support channel last night, I have some further info on this.

It seems to be an aastra specific thing. I have a softkey programmed for the aastra phone, using the aastra.cfg file in /tftpboot/ the settings are:

[code:1]softkey4 line: 1
softkey4 type: park
softkey4 label: "Park call"
softkey4 value: asterisk;70
softkey4 states: connected[/code:1]

Pressing this button while in a call puts the other party on hold, and asterisk informs me of the parking location and then instead of hanging up, it plays music at me.

If I transfer the call to the parking area using ##70, then it hangs up as it should.

The asterisk;70 seems to be sending an actual parking command to the asterisk server, rather than transfering the call.

Here’s the kicker…

Using this parking button, I can park and retrieve the call repeatedly, but if I use ##70, the call can only be parked once, I think others have this problem too.

So, basically both ways of parking are borked!