I understand that in the VoIP universe, the concept of selecting a line via a button before you pick up the phone and dial doesn’t exist anymore, but is there a good way to “fake it”? I have a client that has four different DID’s for the four different companies. There are people in the organization that work for all four companies* and answer the phone differently depending on which DID the client dialed into. They need to be able to return calls by dialing out on the correct DID. In the past I have set up different prefixes for dialing out on the different DID’s, like 618005551212 for company A, 718005551212 to dial out on the DID for company B, etc. But I have one client I am upgrading their ancient analog Panasonic system that really wants to be able to smash a button, pick up the phone, and it dials out on that DID. Any tricks you can recommend? I will be using Yealink phones.
because of this, I can’t just route calls from phone on desk A to go out on DID C. I’ve done that before, but in this case, we have people that are working for the four different companies at the same time from one phone.
Create Extension 1100, 2100, 3100 and 4100. Set the CID on 1100 to be Line 1, 2100 to be Line 2, etc. Assign the 4 line buttons on the phone to those extensions.
For bonus points, create a ring group of 100 that contains 1100, 2100, 3100 etc.
… and in your outbound routes, set the specific outbound routes to connect via the extension that’s placing the call. That way, in addition to the CID from the extension, you can make sure that the CID for the “outbound line” is set correctly in the outbound route.
Having said that - remember that this is not scalable. You are going to run out of phone buttons pretty quickly this way…
Finally, be sure to check with your ITSP to make sure that they honor the CID you are setting on the outbound route. Providers run a rainbow of options, from sending whatever you send for CID and CNAME, to only allowing you to send CID that is assigned to your account, to locking you down to one specific phone number. You don’t need any troubleshooting surprises when you turn this on live.