SupportDude,
First off, please, no apology required for delayed response. I appreciate your very clever offering in the middle of your being busy. Thanks for reading my long explanations.
I have tried your idea and does work pretty well. I hope some adjustment can alleviate 2 issues.
Setup: ATA port assigned with the desired 4 digit DN (AA calls ATA when the 4 digit extension is dialed). ATA is cross-connected to analog trunk.
I assumed you meant I needed to setup a spare m7310 (using a random extension number) in order to make the appearance of the ATA trunk Line and the redirection. Setup redirect at the spare set from inbound ATA Trunk using line poolA to dial out to the target outside phone number.
In the test environment: dial the 4 digit extension (either from internal intercom or from Auto-Attendant) -- the system says "one moment please", then there is silence for a few seconds (totally okay so far), then ringing, then answered by the redirected target phone number. This was great!! Voice quality and volume are clear, etc., the appearance of professionalism to a caller sounds great, etc.
There are two problems I have encountered so far.
1) Touch-tone signals not being relayed from keypad of initial caller to the far end answering system.
Touch-tones don’t work after the redirect. This means outside caller reaches auto attendant, touch-tones work fine to navigate to the 4-digit extension. But after the redirect, when reaching the far end users voicemail system, the touch-tones do not respond. Even though I didn’t really think this was the problem, I did verify that all phone lines are set for “dialmode -- tone”.
2) Phone lines are remaining tied up after the call is complete.
Following the call, in most of the tests, the ATA will not let go of the line it used from the line pool. When it does go wrong, there appears to be no time-out when it finally will disconnect the line. It does appear to be dependent on the type of system that is called. My earliest tests were using a cell phone as the redirected target. If the call was answered, and then the far end (cell phone) hangs up or “ends call” on the cell phone – all is well – the Norstar resets and is ready for more calls. This is true with almost any call to any type of phone where the far-end recipient answers live and then hangs up first. If the cell phone is off or out of range and you reach the cell phone company system message “sorry your party is not available…” the cell phone company apparently never hangs up the call. It also seems to happen when reaching some other automated systems – but not all. So the line from the line poolA is in use indefinitely until I physically break the cross-connect between the ATA and the trunk port.
To attempt a summary: My initial conclusion is that the problem is due to the far end not hanging up or not registering as already having been hung up. If the call is successful and reaches a live far-end party and the far-end hangs up the call, the call is ended properly and the system is ready for another call. If the near-end hangs up first, but the far end leaves the call off-hook, the system will free up the inbound line but will not free the outbound redirected line.
I have verified that all phone lines involved are set for Supervision. I can break the connection by disconnecting the cross-connect between ATA and trunk port. I have tried adjusting the settings under Capabilities - ATA Settings, but this doesn't seem to effect anything.
Thanks again,
Ted
