Clustered Pickup

[tommylux]

Hi,

We have extensions over two controllers, Users are put in a clustered pickup group and appear on both switches inside this group.

Only on certain phones, when you try to pick up a call, the pickup information is displayed on screen and it looks like its about to pick up, but the phone is dead, and the the other phone is still ringing.

Tried to do a ops change, which didnt work.

Any ideas?

Tom

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

Our experience with clustered switches over the past 7 years very strongly suggests that 'best practice' is to carefully plan broadcast groups, pickup groups, busy lamps, & similar "groups" to have distinct boundaries strictly confined within a common cluster element. The minute you split "groups" across multiple controllers, you're inviting grief.

While true that clustered groups (key apps, pickup groups, etc) do indeed work, there will always be a slight time-lag between what happens on the local host machine (in real time) vs what you see occurring on a remote key appearance (or in your case remote pickup) for any given event. Result is you have users on one controller competing with users on the other controller to "pick up" a ringing call. Other events glare with each other as well, such as when the caller hangs up & the call clears down on the host controller yet continues to ring for one additional ring cycle on the remote. The exact same thing occurs when call forwarding or rerouting takes the call. The "host" knows immediately, but the remote lags. Users on the remote are reaching for a call that's already gone.

Your users cannot be expected to understand what's occurring. All they know is they attempted to do something that the PBX wouldn't allow them to do. The user perceives it as a problem or shortcoming with the system, when the root cause (IMO) is poor planning on the part of the system installer.

 

[slapin]

MitelInMyBlood, +1

Very detailed explanation.

 

[tommylux]

Thanks guys, sorry for the delayed response.