New FreePBX system

General Help
1

Hi,

We’ve just had a FreePBX system installed using Cisco 7960 IP phones. Two features that seem the most basic for any phone system, would be:

  1. Call Pickup - Any extension being able to pickup any rining extension (if they know the extension #)

  2. Call Groups - Transfer an incoming call to a “calling group”, which would ring all the phones in a specific department. When the call is answered, the other extensions would stop ringing.

The installers are telling us that these are not possible. I had nothing to do with the selection of this phone system, but I have a hard time believing that this basic functionality is not included. It seems more likely, that either the installers dont know how to set it up, or just dont want to be bothered.

I would appreciate it if someone could tell me if these are possible, and maybe some pointers on how to set it up.

Thanks,

David McConnell

2

Yup that should be trivial to setup based on how you explained it. I think call pickup is already set up in FreePBX with a default of “**+ext”. Call group or ring group as it’s called in FreePBX is a module in the incoming control group. It allows you to assign a number that rings other extensions and can do other things if nobody answers.

3

I did find the ** + ext for call pickup, and it works, if I transfer a call from a station to another phone, i can then pick it up with ** + ext. Where this doesnt work, is if the operator transfers the call. Then when you hit ** + ext, you just get a busy signal. I’m sure it must just be a setting off somewhere that’s the problem.

4

Asterisk has a couple of different types of call pickup. Directed call pickup or just Call Pickup. The quick and dirty answer is to set each extension’s device information to callgroup=1 and pickupgroup=1 and then any phone can just press *8 and pickup any other phone that is ringing, without having to put in the extension number. If you want more fine grained control of this then you’ll have to do a bit of googling (mostly on voip-info.org) to get the additional information on how to set this up.

Philippe Lindheimer - FreePBX Project Lead
http//freepbx.org - IRC #freepbx

5

So if *8 picks up whatever extension is ringing what happens when 2 extensions each ring with 2 separate calls?

6

I’d suggest setting up the environment and trying it. It’s an Asterisk feature, probably one gets answered and the other keeps ringing. Let us know what you find out.

Philippe Lindheimer - FreePBX Project Lead
http//freepbx.org - IRC #freepbx