Hey everyone! I came across a situation the other day and started looking into ways around it and would appreciate any ideas or thoughts…
Basically, it was brought to my attention that when we set our mobile to do not disturb it also puts our desktop phones on DND. Since they both run on the same extension, I guess this makes sense. So we thought that we could just separate the two into 2 separate extensions and just setup find me/follow me so they both ring when either is called. That all seems to work fine except when we try to use BLF Directed Call Pickup… We realized that if ext A is called and we try to pickup ext B it gives us a busy tone. This is where we have been stuck at up to this point.
Anyone have any ideas on how to keep our 2 devices separate and still be able to use BLF Directed Call Pickup? Maybe this isn’t possible which we are prepared to accept that end result also. The main thing we were trying to achieve was to be able to turn on DND for our cell phones when we are not wanting calls but to allow our desk phones to still receive calls.
Have incoming calls go to the mobile extension first then forward to the desk phone? If the mobile is in dnd, or turned off, or the app isn’t running on the mobile or whatever - which would be the normal thing I would think - the call goes to the desk phone extension. I think maybe the problem is trying to get them both to ring at the same time when a call comes in…?
Thank you for your response… yes, that is the hard part. We need them both to ring and the find me/follow me feature seems to do that part the best. If I forwarded it to a ring group with just the two extensions in it, should we be able to still pick up either ringing extension? Seems that trying this allows for both to ring but if I remember right we still were getting the busy tone when trying to pick up the call with directed call pickup… We do currently have the mobile extension receiving the call first but then using FM/FM to have them both ring shortly after that.
Trust me I went though this recently in our department with our Cisco UCM it’s not even a FreePBX phone system. The concept of having both ring at the same time for an incoming call and then using directed call pickup is a pbx non-starter because to put it simply it’s not logical.
You can have a single logical extension that has BLF keys on all the phones you want and then answer that extension from any BLF, in which case all will ring at the same time but you will have the DND issue you saw, or you can have an incoming call forwarded around from extension to extension number and control over it’s own DND - but you cannot have a single extension that’s a BLF key on a bunch of phones act in one moment like each phone has independent control from the BLF and then in the other moment does not. Nor can you kludge together what you think you want by abusing the follow me find me feature. It took me quite a while to explain the logic to people and some of them I think still didn’t believe me, and these are IT staffers who should know better.
At first the group here decided to do the call-chase-me thing with the call ringing at one extension then transferred when that extension didn’t pick up to another, and so on. I told them that wouldn’t work but they didn’t believe me so I let them program it in. As I predicted it failed because the caller got tired of the phone just ringing and ringing and no answer and would hang up before the call completed running around to each extension. Sometimes you just have to program in what people think they want to have happen in a PBX even though you know it’s bogus because their minds can’t conceptualize the logical error until they see it demonstrated. So now it’s back to the old way with a BLF on every phone the staff wants to answer the extension from and they just don’t use DND at all, instead they turn the ringer volume down on their deskphone and just ignore it when it rings instead of relying on DND. And like I said there’s still a few holdouts because every 6 months or so this topic gets raised again and I have to explain it all over again and remind people of how it didn’t work the last time.
I totally feel for you on the explaining things again after 6 months. I see what you mean and I think you are saying that what I am looking to achieve isn’t possible… is that right? It is either all devices on the same extension and just ignore calls to the one we aren’t wanting or separate them but expect the directed call pickup to not work… if I am understanding you correctly. We heavily use ring groups in place of forwarding to help eliminate extra rings for the caller and have discovered certain limitations with them also… like not being able to pick up another’s call using directed call pickup. FM/FM must treat the list of extensions that you input as a ring group of sorts thus making it impossible to use a BLF to pick up a call.
I kind of suspected that the answer may be “it isn’t possible” but this community is awesome and sometimes I am surprised at what you all come up with to make things work. I appreciate your responses!
Sort of. Basically I’m saying that this isn’t a pure technology problem and it’s not a pure human problem. It’s a hybrid. The way you solve these kinds of hybrid problems is - you push the technology as far as you can push it, do what you can to take advantage of features - and then work on the retraining of the people. Getting the users out of the mindset that “the tech can be made to do what I want” is the key here. It’s like driving a car - the driver may want very much to have a car that is like the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car that can be driven into the lake and turn into a boat - but if their mindset is “the tech can be made to do what I want” they are going to end up with their car at the bottom of the lake.
For MY installation the best solution was to just use the BLF key and tell the IT people to go pound sand and use the PBX the way God (or Cisco, same thing LOL) intended. IT people are supposed to be cognizant of tech limits so it was good practice for them to run up against one - helps them be a bit more empathetic to the users.
For you, just because the PBX can’t do what the users want - doesn’t mean that a hybrid solution might not be a combination of maybe some users have BLF keys on their desk phones and others don’t, maybe you do 2 extensions one on BLF and the call gets forwarded to it if nobody picks up and the second extension does ring around the rosy…
Just explain the limits of the tech to the users and what the options are and let them experiment. They will for sure come up with some kludge, LOL. But as long as they are happy with their kludge…
I totally feel for you on the explaining things again after 6 months. I see what you mean and I think you are saying that what I am looking to achieve isn’t possible… is that right? It is either all devices on the same extension and just ignore calls to the one we aren’t wanting or separate them but expect the directed call pickup to not work… if I am understanding you correctly. We heavily use ring groups in place of forwarding to help eliminate extra rings for the caller and have discovered certain limitations with them also… like not being able to pick up another’s call using directed call pickup. FM/FM must treat the list of extensions that you input as a ring group of sorts thus making it impossible to use a BLF to pick up a call.