Routing a ring group if extensions are unreachable

Server is in the cloud. Extensions are at an office. If a external caller reaches the ring group and the internet is down in the office, I would like to route it to a cell phone, but if the internet is up and the phones are reachable, I would like it to go to the existing busy VM. Would changing all extensions in the ring group to have a unreachable destination work? What is my best course of action?

Phones are in the office and connected to the PBX through your local ISP. If that connection is down, you want the ring-group to use the ‘fail over’ destination (which could be a voicemail on the server or a cell phone, depending on what you want to set up). I’d use a Misc Dest to set up the cell phone, perhaps with a swing through a “SetCallerID” to advise the receiver that they are getting an emergency bypass.

Ring groups just ring a bunch of ringing phones, so if you are using this and no one is picking up, you are going to hit (theoretically at random) one of the phones’ voicemails. This might not be what you are looking for.

One solution for this is to set up fake extension that ‘short circuits’ the drop to voicemail by terminating the ringing group and going to voice mail a few second before everyone else. This should drop all of the incoming calls that go to the RG into a single VM box. In fact, you can use the same method to send all of the calls for when the phones are down to voicemail.

Your idea about adding unreachable destinations is not really scalable - it would be better to work out a solution that doesn’t rely on the extension settings (since they’d all have to agree).

The call flow does not follow the extensions settings. A ring group rings and then follows it’s own rules.

Are you wanting to ring to multiple cell phones? That is is a horrible idea.

What happens when cell phone A happens to be out of service and goes straight to voicemail? There goes your caller to the cellular voicemail.

Have fun with that…

That’s not at all what I want. Not sure where you got that from. I am looking to ring a cell phone if the RG extensions are unreachable, if they are reachable, timeout to VM.

A ring group rings a bunch of phones. If they are available, they answer, if not, you go to the “error” destination. There’s not really a “third” choice. A ring group doesn’t really have the capability to do a lot of extension management, because a ring group really isn’t a “thing”. It really just rings a bunch of extensions.

Totally. So any ideas on a workaround?

This is still my best suggestion. It’s a “sacrificial” extension - it’s only purpose is to ring through to the voicemail (or FMFM) extension. Since it doesn’t exist in the physical network, it will work even when the phones are completely unreachable.

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