Ring and Announcement

This is one thing that I have tried to do in the past and never worked out how or if it is possible through freepbx.

Is it possible to have phones/endpoints ring while an announcement being played. For example at the moment somebody rings in, an announcement is played then the ring group rings. What I’d like to be able to achieve is person rings in, announcement is played and simultaneously while the announcement is being played the phones ring whether this is achieved through ring groups or queues i don’t mind.

Go to Music on Hold, add a new Music Category, the in that category add a file that contains your announcement, plus maybe one or two music files (can be the same files that are used in other categories, or alternately you could use a recording of a ringing signal, if you know how to make one. For that matter, the announcement followed by ringing signal could be in one audio file). Make sure that random play is disabled so the announcement always plays first.

Then in your ring group, look for the Play Music on Hold dropdown and change it to use your new music category.

What I don’t know is what then happens if you put someone on hold - I think that dropdown is only applicable while the call is being connected, but you may want to test making an incoming call, then putting that call on hold to see whether it plays that announcement to on-hold callers. I don’t think it does, but you’ll have to test to make sure.

This is kind of non-standard but it may accomplish what you want. Note also that if you were not using a ring group you could use the “Music on Hold” dropdown in your Incoming Route to accomplish the same thing, but if your destination is a ring group then I think you may have to set it there.