Hello all. I am trying to figure out if there is a way to park a call and then dial a number, all with one shortkey, or can I do some sort of workaround with creating a virtual extension, etc.
The goal is to have one softkey that parks to parking lot 700 and then dials extension **9000 which is the keys we use to page.
Has anyone done this before?
The Parking Pro module does this in FreePBX. If you can’t run commercial modules then you should look at Park and Announce in Asterisk. You will have to write custom dialplan the latter but that application does exactly what you want.
I’m not sure that will work per his description. Park and announce can dial something like a paging system and speak a specific thing like “Call Parked on 701”. However, it doesn’t have the ability to park and then connect the parking party to a page group or page system to manually announce something like “Mr. Smith, you have a call parked on 701.”
I use park and announce on systems to take a call from a specific DID and then announce via telephone set paging “Call waiting for accounting on 701.” I don’t see how the request of the OP could be fulfilled using just this command. Some manual dial plan coding using park() followed by a dial() command might be able to achieve what he wants.
I guess there needs to be some more clarification here. Because to park a call one must transfer that call and one-touch parking is done via a blind transfer method. That said, regardless of the method (blind v attended) once the call is transferred to the parking lot, it tells you where the call was parked. That’s it, the call is over. You want to announce that someone is on line 1, you need to do a page group to announce it via paging.
If the goal is to have a custom announcement for each parked call then it can most likely be done, it will require some custom dialplan and might be able to do it as one-touch, per se. Roughly it would be:
- Attended transfer to extension that answers call
- Prompt the user to record a custom message via Record()
- Have user press terminate key like # to do the rest.
- Trigger Goto() to send to the ParkandAnnounce() app that will use the just recorded file
- hangup
That’s a rough idea that would need to be proven out but it should be able to do some style of one-touch.
Thanks to you both for the input. The client I’m working with is old school and still has a receptionist that will “switchboard” as they call it, and park a call, and then dial the **ext of the person that has a parked call. “Mr/Ms so and so is on 701” and then either hang up, or retrieve the park call to take a message.
The automated announcement would be very cool IF they didn’t have this receptionist.
Basically, the end goal is to program buttons on the sidecar to park the call, wait for it to park, and then dial the extension of the person that was pressed, so the receptionist can announce the call.
I am aware we can program a park button AND a page button, but I was hoping there was a one and done button option.
I will take a look at custom dial plans. I’m totally in the dark when it comes to that, but I’m sure there’s some docs out there somewhere 
**Edit. I keep saying announcement when I actually mean PAGE. We are PAGING an extension and saying “Mr smith is on 701”
When you say announce the call can you be more specific as to what you want?
- Park call, call extension and tell them they have a call. If they don’t answer or don’t want it, take a message.
OR
- Park call, record announcement, play back announcement over PA system for all to hear and the right person to act.
If you are looking for the first option then there is no way to one touch this. You can add BLFs for each extension you need to dial so it can speeddial them but also show if they are on the phone or not. You would still have to park, then hit destination BLF key to ring them.
I’ve edited my comment btw.
I keep calling it an announcement but I actually mean to PAGE an extension.
So in short, the first option that you referred to is what I wanted to accomplish, and also what I thought…no such way to accomplish this.
What you’re describing is what we currently have in place but was the client has asked for a one touch option.
Guess I’ve reached a dead end but glad to know I was at least correct.
Honestly, the handing of each call individually with the interaction with the two users is just an attended transfer
Depending on the type of phones that you have and if you had sidecars, you could setup the BLF buttons to use an attended transfer. That would allow for the receptionist to press the BLF key for the extension they want to call, it will put the caller on hold and dial the destination. If they answer and want the call, the receptionist just needs to complete the transfer (hit transfer key). If they don’t, they are put back on the original call.
That might work a bit better, at least the destination callee doesn’t have to hang up and then dial the parking lot to grab the call. They could just be handed the call.
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