Multiple Physical Lines

[MarkMasters]

Hi All

Hopefully this is the right place to ask this question.

I need some kind of system that can allow (hypothetically) ten field operatives to telephone in from mobiles to a base unit. Each of these ten operatives must never hear an engaged tone, so my first thought was imagining that we would need ten individual lines going into something like a BCM50 - can I get away with not having ten individual lines? Is there seomthing I can do with VoIP? Based in the UK btw. All inbound calls will be from within the UK, but this may expand to other countries later.

Thanks.

Mark

 

[biglebowski]

Not sure what you are after, why do they need to dial in?

When I was born I was so suprised I didn't talk for 18 months

 

[MarkMasters]

They need to dial in and leave a voicemail. The system needs to be so that they never receive an engaged tone when they dial in.

 

[paterson]

Have one telephone line be answered directly/immediately by the voicemail???? Pretty simple.

If you are using the BCM50, it would be very easy. Calls in on that telephone line would be answered by the voicemail and the caller would hear the main system greeting. From there, they can dial to a mailbox or to an extension and then to voicemail.

The company that installed your BCM should be able to set this up without any issues.



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[donb01]

I don't want to sound incredibly stupid here, but if his goal is to have 10 people who never get an 'engaged tone' (busy signal?), and you only have one line, answered immediately by voicemail, how do the other 9 callers NOT get a busy signal?

I do that all the time myself, but I have ISDN PRI and an ideal circumstance would allow 23 simultaneous calls to that same number, but that is a completely different scenario.

I also use remote call forwarding of numbers and have multiple channels set up by the phone company to the same number, but those also route to the above PRI and there are no limits there either.

If you had some kind of phone system you could set up a circular hunt group and maybe 4 or 5 lines, playing the odds that it is unlikely more than 4 or 5 users will call in at the exact same time - but again, that is a crap shoot. If all 4/5 lines are busy the caller would simply hear a ringing tone until someone hangs up the line and makes a slot.

Another possibility is looking in to a messaging service that already has multiple lines and would be unlikely to have a busy signal. The monthly cost of the messaging service may be less than the cost of X number of phone lines per month.

 

[paterson]

The bottom line is that if the line is already in use, then the caller will receive a busy tone (or engaged tone, but I have never heard it refered to as that.) This is true for a single analog line or a full PRI with 23 B channels. If the 23 B channels are busy, you will get a busy tone. If the line or lines are busy, the call will NEVER get to a phone system regardless of the type of phone system or the programming on that phone system. So you will need to figure out how many CONCURENT inbound and outbound phone calls you expect to support and then have that many lines or B channels provided by your phone company.

Once the call is in the phone system, then it is all different. You mention a hunt group that when every member or phone in the group is busy, the caller still hears a ringing tone. Well, that probably won't work on most systems. I certainly don't know every one out there, but the ones I do know it won't work. What you need is ACD, Automatic Call Distrubution, or another term would be a call center. Send the calls to an ACD queue and then have ACD agents login to receive those calls. This is just a basic description of ACD, but it will probably get more complicated once you actually set one up.

Alternatively, you could set up one line that gets forwarded at the CO to a answering service. Once the call is forwarded, the line is available for another call provided of course that the forwarding destination can handle multiple calls.



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[skip555]

single line with telco VM a unlimited number of callers can leave messages at once

I just tried my grand central line and it does the same (for free),vonage (or other VOIP lines )may do it for you also

 

[jknichols]

Not sure how many simultaneous calls the VM on a BCM can handle but my Toshiba DK280 has an 8-port voicemail card so even with ten dedicated lines to the phone company the last two calls would still not get answered!

 

[jerryreeve]

If you get 10 lines from BT with one number (Hunt group in the US) so that when anyone dials that number if the first line is busy the call is forwarded to the next number, you will have a "non-blocking" system. If you keep this number unpublished and only these 10 people know the number then they will never bet an engaged signal. You can monitor this via SMDR or telco reports and see if a number of the lines are never used, you can then reduce by that number of lines minus one and you will have a "Probable non-blocking" in that even though you have less than 1 line per agent your distribution of calls is such that the instance of blocked calls is rare instead of never.

this group of lines needs to be kept seperate from your other lines coming into or going out of your phone system otherwise your regular calls could start blocking the "agents" group of lines.

even with a PRI you can run a risk of blocking calls if the number of stations plus ports of the voicemail exceeds 23.

now for the rub, you also need to have 10 dedicated ports on your voicemail, these are seperate from your regular voicemail ports and need to be set up in such a way that only calls from the agent group can use those ports. this is useually rather expensive. although you can set up in most system programming to have calls to Voicemail give ringback rather than busy. it may take a few more seconds to get into voicemail this way.

end result is that it can be done but it takes care and also more equipment to ensure that your agents NEVER get an engaged/busy signal.





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'Rule 29', "The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less."
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JerryReeve
Communication Systems Int'l
com-sys.com

 

[MarkMasters]

Thanks for all this - pretty useful stuff. I guess I've got two choices, either a PRI, or lease lines from an established company with capacity.

Does anyone have an idea or a budgetary cost for installation/monthly for a PRI, UK located, presumably with BT?

 

[biglebowski]

Do they need to listen to each others messages or is there one person listening to these messages?

When I was born I was so suprised I didn't talk for 18 months

 

[MarkMasters]

They will dial in, leave a message, and then that audio file will be distributed via an internal app to the required staff member.

They won't be listening to each other's messages.

 

[biglebowski]

Vodafone have a facility at the moment where it will email you the voicemail message. The from address is the phone number that left the message and it attaches the audio to the email. I have all the sender addresses set up in outlook so when I get a voicemail it displays the sender as a name. The attachments are also small and can be archived. Just buy a pay monthly sim card and leave it on divert to VM and the field guys can save the number as a speed dial.

When I was born I was so suprised I didn't talk for 18 months

 

[biglebowski]

Forgot to say in theory you could set up an account in exchange use this for all voicemail emails and then have rules set up based on the senders so they will be forwarded to individuals or dist lists.

When I was born I was so suprised I didn't talk for 18 months