Call forward non-primary line from phone?

[Oldtimephoneguy]

Good day! Is there a way to call forward a non-primary line (line #2 as an example) from a phone? The only way I can get a line to call forward is if it's the primary (line #1) on the phone by pushing the call forward button and entering the target number.
Thanks in advance!

Frank. City of Cape Coral, Florida

 

[whykap]

They have to use the ccmuser page for second line forwarding.
Some of the newer sip phones (99XX) do have that capability though.

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

You as the sysadmin can of course do it via the Sysadmin web gui, but I assume you knew that Whykap is correct that the only way the end user can do it themselves is via the CCM User web gui. I'm unsure why this was left out of the 99xx SIP phones - perhaps an oversight that may be added back in later (if enough people miss it and ask for it)

Fortunately this is seldom asked for today, except when someone is new to Cisco and having just come from one of the older legacy systems where this (and other features) was possible via a library of dialed feature access codes. The one my users miss most is "Remote Call Fwd I Am Here" where the user works at another desk temporarily and forgets to forward his/her phone to the temporary location. Sometimes they'll put in a Help Desk ticket & we send them the URL to CCMUSER along with brief instructions or remind those that have it, that the feature is right under their nose via their CUPC client (which of course they didn't launch).

Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[trvlr1]

Mitel: One of the many features called "Mobility ...." in the Cisco system, allows users to go to any other similar phone and log themselves in. It not only forwards the number, it in fact brings their whole phone set up to the new location. This has proved very handy to us, having lots of travellers in the US, Canada and Mexico. It might help out with your users too.

 

[Oldtimephoneguy]

Thanks all. They don't want to give our "rocket scientist" employees access to the CCMUSER options as it'll cause user problems/service calls. We know we can do it via Sysadmin web gui but we're trying other options. It's for our Emergency Operations Center and in case of an activation they want the people there to be able to turn the call center on and off when they need to rather than our IT department doing it. Appreciate all your help!!

Frank. City of Cape Coral, Florida

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

trvlr1:
We looked at Mobility & decided against it. For one thing, not knowing who'd use it and who wouldn't, we'd have had to give it to everyone. All well & good except the feature consumes a DLU so we'd be burning 1700+ DLUs when likely fewer than 10% of users would ever use it.

It also wouldn't work for our Admins who might be covering someone's phones for them while they're on vacation, sick leave, etc. They don't need nor want anything fancy, just to be able to forward their phones to a temporary location without disturbing other call flow in place. "Call Fwd Follow Me Remote" is a really cool feature that CUCM doesn't offer.

Mobility would be fine for the Army Ants that like to move about, but they can just as easily take their phone with them (or burn up some more DLUs, add another server, and use CUPC.

Each brand of phone system is unique in its feature sets and Cisco, while offering a decent compliment of features, has also overlooked some that for some users were important to them and therefore now sorely missed. Over time everyone learns to cope with what they've been given and moves on, though you still ask yourself "what were they thinking" in leaving out a specific feature.

It would also be nice to see a wall-mount bracket that supported expansion modules.


Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[whykap]

What does the follow forward me remote feature do that you can't get in call manager?

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

Well, since you asked, CFFM Remote allows the end-user the ability to CF Always any phone on the system to any destination, worldwide using only (predefined) keypad access codes to implement. It can be activated from any phone on-net -or- from any off-net location worldwide via DISA (Direct Inward System Access).

To use DISA the end user dials a toll free number & waits for 2nd dial tone, then enters an 11-digit personal pin. If the pin is accepted, the system responds with a 3rd dial tone. At this point the end user is as if at their desk & thus able to dial any number or perform any feature access code function remotely that he could perform from his desk, ie. one of those was CFFM Remote that allowed the (now authenticated) user to redirect calls for his office DN to *any* destination number of his choosing, worldwide. Without needing internet access to do it.

Here in Hurricane country (Houston) that "ability" was often leveraged when employees were otherwise unable to come into the office or had already evacuated to a safe location. Yes, to a limited degree they can still do it with CCMUSER, but that tool requires internet access + a VPN client on a company-owned (secured) laptop. If they don't have their company laptop or don't have internet access, they're SOL unless they can reach a sysadmin (who may also have evacuated).

We still do have DISA, as we kept one of the 3300-ICP systems just for that exact reason, as DISA allows us to reach on-net tielines to remote field locations along our (OC-3) terrestrial microwave system. This also allows TEHO (Tail-end hop-off) to leverage the LEC in major cities along our microwave path,i.e., Boston & Nashville.

Also unlike Cisco's version of DISA, which requires the originating location be predefined, this one could care less where you're calling-in from. As long as you authenticate with a valid pin, you're golden.



Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[whykap]

Even though there is not the EXACT same feature in cucm there's alternatives. If you want the truth why cisco has not fully implemented DISA is because there is no demand for it. If there was, they would have.
I understand that you are a large corporation, around 10000 handsets or so maybe more, but even if 10 companies like yours had that demand you would still be less than .000001 percent of the base out there.
Truth is cisco rather put their R&D into developing new features and relevant apps.

It's not like they don't have options to replace the DISA feature you mentioned. You don't like how cisco implements DISA so you don't use it. OK. Also the much better alternative of a VPN softphone and/or cucm userpage (user experience much better than dialing an 800 number and hitting 10000 keypad entries to make or receive a call) does not apply to your needs as the users would evacuate and leave all their belongings including their laptop there.

A third alternative would be the "cisco mobile connect" currently "jabber" for smartphones that fully emulates your ip phone on your smart phone including most features. Via wireless or cellular network.

Now the argument could be that some users don't have smart phones but who doesn't these days at least in the modern workforce?

Here's the thing. I don't have a phone line at home, I see it as a waste of money, so DISA wouldn't work for me in your environment in case of emergency.
No laptop, no cell, no landline. And since it 2013 there's no payphones to access DISA from.

My point is this. The options are there and unless you are the military (they barely use DISA anymore, see ip telephony), if you are complaining about DISA not working in a system as it did in earlier years in an older system, you are living in the past. I understand that the MITEL 3300 implements DISA like the SX2000 did, but the 3300 is an SX2000 in a server and an Ethernet card (do they still have the E2T interface that has to translate all ip to TDM?)

If your users are complaining on using their computers or smartphones to access features I am guessing they are an aging group (no offense but it's true) and they better get with the program or time to retire.
Shit don't work today like it did in 1980. What's next? Ask for a telex machine?

Sorry for the rant. Obviously I have nothing better to do on a Saturday night but it gets old comparing systems and features especially obsolete.
By the way, I did my first call manager install in 2000 and I still haven't had a customer ask for DISA because they don't like the cucm user page. Or ask for DISA period.

Users and admins DO complain when we replace a system with CISCO but that's the nature of the beast.
Users don't like change, that means relearning things and admins have to learn a new system from scratch.
If you go back a couple of months later, 99% of the users love their new phones and features and admins are adapting or have changed jobs.

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

Admittedly DISA is rare these days, but our primary need for it is to allow external access to internal (non-DID) numbers AKA tieline numbers served via our terrestrial microwave system.

And yes, there's an awful lot of grey hair around here, myself included. We also realize that Cisco is not going to succumb to our "special" needs. That indeed was one of the true beauties of the Mitel - they were (are) a very small company (comparatively speaking) and were willing to "cater to" some of the more reasonable whims of what to them represented a major account. In the late 90s ours was the largest single deployment of an all -48DC system in the US running expanded peripherals & flexible dimensions. At the time we were all DC powered we also (and still do) provide dual redundant -48 60-amp DC feeds to the LEC and IXC equipment bays (OC-48, OC-12 and OC-3) along with 5 shelves of DS-1, most of which gear stands idle today, as technologies -and requirements- change.

So far - knock on wood - (3 years into this) the Cisco CUCM (and UCXN, UCCX and CUPS)has proven itself far more reliable than we expected and early issues were determined as proving to our ntwk engrs that the network design wasn't really as robust as they all swore it was - of course proving once again that data is far more tolerant of network SNAFUs than voice. In their defense Cisco offered to perform a full network analysis before the VOIP rollout, but their offer was perceived as an opportunity for them to try to up-sell us on a lot of gear we really didn't need then (and still don't). The only thing we did do was replace the two aging 6500 cores with a pair of 7K's & upgrade all the closet switches to 3560-G and beef-up the electrical service, replacing 20a circuits with 30a.

The culture shock was probably felt more by people like myself who have to administer the thing & having it dropped in our lap & then trying to learn to navigate a GUI programming interface after being accustomed to 25+ years using a CLI. Building the first few phones felt a lot like building sand castles using only tweezers and a magnifying glass. - i.e., so horribly granular. Of course all was LDAP-synched + requiring CSF softphones for each user in addition to their hard phones, enabling CUPS licenses, voice mail, etc.

We just last month finally got around to completing a forklift replacement of our E911 system, which up until then was still running on 1 remaining node of the Mitel. We had looked at CER with some functionality add-ons from a 3rd party custom configurator but decided that was too much of a cluster-xxxx and so went with a single-vendor solution (Enterprise Alert from AMCOM) which includes dynamic tracking of the moves/adds/changes down to the switchport level literally as they occur. (Several military installations also use Amcom) Our Cisco VAR came in and looked at it today & could not believe all that it does for 1/2 the cost of the solution they had proposed.


Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member