I have had at least 3 different installs calling and complaining that “parked calls” isn’t working. When I drill down to it, it is a scenario where a secretary or some such is dialing a number, sitting on hold until the person comes on, then trying to park the call so the boss can pick up.
I read the article Can't park outbound calls but not sure if this is whats holding up parking outbound calls. The above scenario seems perfectly plausible, or like if one person has made a call to an outside line, but then the call needs to be transferred to another extension.
Does anyone care to comment on the ability to park outbound calls? Inbound parks like a dream.
First, you need to determine whether this is a technical problem or user error. With luck, the Asterisk log for a failed call will tell you. If unclear, test by having the secretary call you, park the call and pick it up elsewhere.
If technical and you can’t find the trouble, paste the log at pastebin.freepbx.org and post the link here.
If human error, try to reduce that. The secretary should have a park key (two if they park many calls and there could be two at a time). Using feature codes is error prone. Also, if the boss is at his desk, the call should be transferred (by pressing a BLF key), rather than parked.
It seems likely based on your description that your Park process uses in-call feature codes to do the transfer and that the feature code is disabled for trunk calls.
Transferring a call to park using a SIP transfer method (from the phone) should work.
This may be easier said than done depending on the phones you are using and whether you are provisioning them with Endpoint Manager.
I hadn’t thought of the in-call feature problem noted by @billsimon, but that is a likely scenario. IMO, in-call feature codes are a specialty function and should be avoided when possible. They have security issues, play unwanted beeps to the remote party, and sometimes interfere with using DTMF to control a remote system. If the phones are so lame that they don’t even have a Transfer key or softkey, get something better. If the budget is tight, at least the receptionist (and probably the boss) should have good phones.
I am using ClearlyIP phones in each of the particular locations except for 1. Budget is not really an issue here, they bought nice systems.
They have transfer buttons, but I have each of them setup with BLF keys for “Park 1”, “Park 2” and “Park 3”. So parking a call is as easy as hitting the BLF key, resuming being the same.
I know in one of the 3 locations mentioned they kept their old Polycom IP550 phones, so I have to check and see what I have setup for keys.
It sounds like either @Stewart1 or @billsimon don’t see outbound calling as an issue to park calls, which is great. Will report back what I find.
I just checked. The two locations with CIP phones are using the blind transfer feature / BLF key to transfer to the specific parked extension. The third location, still using the old Polycom phones, has a speed dial key setup for ##70.
Would there be anything preventing the calling party (as it seems to happen on outgoing calls only) from parking?
The Polycom location cited a few examples where they parked a call to answer another call, or to have the vendor they called talk to another extension to answer a question. All seems to be on outbound calling only.
Thanks for the reply, @billsimon. What I have going on is inbound calls working great, either on CIP or Polycom phones. CIP using blind transfer BLF key. What I am having trouble with is when an internal user dials out to a vendor, for example, then the vendor wishes to talk to another person in the office, so normally (previous system) they would park the call, let the other internal user pick up. Right now, on FreePBX, it is not allowing me thus far to park the call if it originated from the inside the phone network. If the call comes from the outside, no issue, parks fine either Polycom or CIP.
So its not allowing you to park the call from EITHER phone types?
I just made a test, and if I call out to my cell phone, I am able to park the call using the BLF thats programmed for a particular park slot (my case, being 101. Yours probably by default being 71)
Can you test if you can manually transfer to the parking slot extension?
