We had a user discover that her calls were not coming through. We looked, and in the FreePBX GUI, it showed her extension as being set for DND. We tried toggling DND on and off on her phone, with no change. Tried resetting the phone to factory, and then a new phone - still no change. Clearly it wasn’t set on the phone, but I couldn’t find any place on the server to toggle this for the extension. Finally I tried logging into the UCP as the user (which we do not use, and the passwords were just auto-set from the initial setup - I can 100% guarantee this user did not go into this page at any point), and I could see that DND was showing as on in here. I set it to Off, and now everything is fine. This is bringing up a number of questions:
This can’t be the only place that this is controlled, right? Surely there’s some central/admin access to this?
Any other ways (key strokes, specific error conditions, etc…) this could get toggled if we did not do it?
How is this expected to interact with the DND codes from the phone? Having it on here appears to override whatever the phone is saying, rather than them working together…is this expected behaviour?
The extension list in FreePBX only seems to show the extension as DND if it’s turned on in this fashion, rather than on the phone directly - is this also expected?
I’m not sure I’ll be able to figure out what happened in this one odd possible glitch, but I’d like at a minimum to understand how these two different DND implementations are expected to work together.
DND can be set at the phone or at the system or both. Use the Feature Codes page to find out what feature code is being used to toggle/disable DND. Also, the DND button on your phone may set a local DND which is propagated up to the server in your local “settings” file in TFTP (for example).
This feature has screwed up at least five or six people in the past couple of months. It’s often hard to spot which device (the extension or the phone) is using the DND.
CFW is another one that does this. Some phones will handle CFW for you and then allow you to set a CFW at the system level. We’ve seen people get screwed up by that one.
Ah…okay, that makes much more sense now. I thought that using the phone’s “DND” toggle key was doing the same thing as the feature code. We’ve given people the instructions re: using the phone’s key instead because 1. it’s easier, and 2. it actually shows “DND On” on the screen of the phone (Aastra 9143i) when that’s used, whereas just punching in the code didn’t. I just assumed the phone’s key was dual-purpose - put the notification up on the screen, and sent the code to the server.
So that’s the answer to why this happened in the first place, likely - I’d guess the user accidentally dialed the feature code somehow. At least it’s a much more likely option than them getting access to the UCP somehow.
Interesting. So if we re-programmed that key to use the feature code (so we don’t have this issue come up again), then we lose that ability to have the notification come up on screen. I know the users find that very handy, so I’d hate to move away from it. I wonder if there’s any way to make it work like I’d thought it did? i.e. use the phone’s native feature and bring up the notification, but also send the feature code.
Will do some digging now that I have a clearer picture. Thanks!
It looks like using a BLF (busy lamp field) is theoretically how I do this - it should allow me to use the system feature code, but still toggle the notification light on the phone. First attempt didn’t work, but not 100% sure I’m doing it right. Will continue to play.
Hmmmm…occurs to me though, that this issue still would’ve happened if I do that. Assuming they use the keys they’re fine, but they’d have been fine if they used the keys in this instance too. Either way, if they manually dial the feature code (whether deliberately or accidentally), then the light won’t be on and we’ll be confused. I think I’m just going to leave the key as is (or maybe get BLF working, mostly out of curiosity), but change the feature code to something that won’t be accidentally dialed.
Really? Interesting. However, I realised once I got the BLF to work - it’s just the little LED directly next to the key. When using the phone’s built in DND, it not only lights that, but the big LED at the top of the phone, plus it actually says “DND On” on the screen. People are used to this, so for now I’ll just change the feature code so it’s less likely to be dialled by accident, and see how it goes for a while. Will keep this in the back pocket in case there are issues with that, though.
