Route / Block calls at the Extension level

Looking for a way to route / block calls at the extension level using FreePBX 12. As an example we have customer that ALWAYS calls the wrong extension and would simply like to route that over to the correct extension. Another example might be if a you want certain calls to go straight to voice mail. This seems like it should be something simple to do but I am not finding how I might configure this.

Thanks!

Don’t know if there’s an easier/cleaner way, but this can be done by creating an inbound routes for each scenario you need to customize.

Specify the DID that people will call (You can leave this blank if you have multiple DIDs and care more about the caller id than what number was dialed)
Specify the CallerID of the person/company you want to single out
Specify the Destination that will occur when that DID + CallerID sequence occurs.

For a blacklist type scenario there’s a module in the admin menu that allows you to generate a list of callers to ignore.

That will not really work for us in this scenario. The first thing the customer is presented with is an IVR where they have many choices for services. It is only when they specifically dial the wrong extension that we want to be able to then route them over to the correct extension. There are many other options they could select which will take them to the correct place and need no adjustment.

Ugh, fixing stupid isn’t always possible/advisable in my experience.

When you say it’s an IVR, are they selecting one of the options? (i.e. press 2 for sales) or do you allow them to dial extensions which they constantly dial wrong?

If they keep pressing 3 for sales (instead of 2 like the recording says) you can create a custom IVR specifically for that user.
If they keep dialing incorrect extensions you can restrict the extensions can be dialed from the IVR, but magically converting a dialed extension from 200 to 205 or similar only when user X dials it is a really weird scenario that I doubt can be handled through the GUI.

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Yes, they would have options like 2 for sales, 3 for billing,… It is only when they type 400 for tier 2 support and this has been assigned to 200 for tier 2 support they would be automatically forwarded. Yes, I understand the fixing stupid analogy, but sometimes this is just easier for everybody involved.

There are plenty of other legitimate reasons I could see for this. Something like every time sales droid X calls, send to voice mail so I can deal with when I have time would not be so odd or I am working in a different area of the building, but waiting for important call from Y. So when Y calls forward it over to where I am, but all the rest of the calls can just behave normally.

Not really that odd.

I better understand what you’re after, but I have no idea how that would be accomplished at the extension level.

While not straight forward, what if you enabled Call Screening on the extension with memory? The first time they called they’d say their name, which would be played to you so you could decide if you want to answer. After that, it will remember who they are and announce them automatically the next time (provided screening is still on).

I agree, it doesn’t do exactly what you want because it would screen all calls. The only other way I know to route calls is with inbound routing which you’ve already said doesn’t work because you don’t want to route them to a single point every time.

I guess you could create an inbound route to an IVR created just for that one user, and in that IVR you could route the call to a different extension than the one used by the “real” IVR. Seems like a lot of work, but would do the job.