Random phones set to Send All Calls

[jneiberger]

I've been working at this company for three years and we have been having a weird problem for even longer than that. Intermittently, it is as if the PBX randomly selects an extension and turns on SAC. We always thought the users were accidentally doing it somehow, but they would swear they didn't. It finally happened to one of our phone system admins today.

Any idea why this would happen? It seems to be a fairly regular occurrence and it's still happening after a recent upgrade to an S8700 from a G3.

Any thoughts?

 

[AvayaTier3]

What are your codes?

display feature-access-codes                                    Page   3 of   9
                               FEATURE ACCESS CODE (FAC)

              Remote Send All Calls Activation:        Deactivation:
                     Send All Calls Activation:        Deactivation:

A great teacher, does not provide answers, but methods to teach others "How and where to find the answers"

bsh

36 years Bell, AT&T, Lucent, Avaya
Tier 3 for 26 years and counting

http://bshtele.com

 

[jneiberger]

SAC activation is #3, deactivation is #3. We don't have codes assigned to Remote SAC.

A few of us have always just assumed that users were accidentally typing *3, but a couple other older admins didn't agree. They said the system just seemed to do it randomly. Whenever I ask a user if they could have accidentally hit *3, they swear up and down that they did not and that they have no idea how SAC got activated. It does seem a little odd.

 

[oguztozan]

How to use this feature

 

[letman2]

We also use *3 to deleate messages in voice mail. We have the same problem and thought that they were pressing *3 thinking they were still in Audix.

 

[AvayaTier3]

letman2 has a valid point.

Maybe changing your send calls codes to something new
will clear this issue.

Most users use a send-calls button on their phone because of the led status when send-calls is activated.

A great teacher, does not provide answers, but methods to teach others "How and where to find the answers"

bsh

36 years Bell, AT&T, Lucent, Avaya
Tier 3 for 26 years and counting

http://bshtele.com

 

[jneiberger]

We use CallXpress for voicemail, which uses 4 to delete mail. I'm not aware of any reason why users would ever hit *3 in our environment. It certainly seems odd that it keeps coming up, but we've never been able to figure out why. This has been going on since long before I got here three years ago.

 

[azphoneguy]

Do you have feature buttons programmed on the phones or do your users only use the FAC's?

We have CFWD buttons on the second page of the phone display in the same place that the first call appearance would be if it were on the first page. We often have users selecting this button thinking it is a call appearance and forwarding their phones to who ever they were trying to call.

 

[jneiberger]

We don't have SAC buttons on any phones, and the phone system admin definitely did not hit *3 on his phone. We're stumped.

 

[Nick44]

Jneiberger,
When your system was upgraded to ACM from the G3, did your installer use the Provision system to convert the database, or did they re-write it on the ACM?


Speak softly and carry a big switch

 

[jneiberger]

I think they took our existing configuration and converted it. We had a two-week period where our configuration was frozen so that the new config would match the old one after the conversion.

I think I see where you're going with that. If it's a configuration issue, that would explain why it carried over to the new system.

But what configuration would cause this? Any idea? It just seems very random.

 

[Nick44]

I'm willing to bet that's what it is.
Avayatier3 has the proof, if it won't bother your users too much change the FAC, be interesting to see if it goes away, then you can start looking for it.
Have you thought of wether you have console permissions allowed on any set that may be machine based?
for example, if a set (maybe a modem, or an autobanking terminal) has console permissions and then sends out a dialstring *312345678 this would SAC station 1234 to station 5678.


Speak softly and carry a big switch

 

[jneiberger]

That's an interesting idea and worth checking into, but the weird part about this is that it's never the same extension that it happens to. It's always different. And we know that our phone system admin (who is also one of the senior data network admins) did not hit *3 and it happened to him.

But if something in the network were dialing *3 and then some other digits for some reason, and if those digits changed from time to time, maybe that would explain it. I'll check into it.

Thanks!

 

[Nick44]

Another thought.
CallXpress uses the * key for help in a subscriber mailbox, and can use * in a callprocessor mailbox.
Also if Callxpress is using AMIS neworking, it dials various strings, including * and # and mailbox (extension) numbers.
If your CX ports have console permissions, I can easily see how CX could be doing this.


Speak softly and carry a big switch

 

[jneiberger]

Thanks, I'll check into that, too!

 

[Nick44]

Would you let me know how you get on?
You have my curiosity aroused!

Speak softly and carry a big switch

 

[jneiberger]

I was just talking to our other phone guys. One of them said that this was one of the first quirks of our Avaya system that he learned when he started many years ago, long before CallXpress. The head network/phone supervisor at the time just told him that it happens and no one has been able to figure out why yet.

It doesn't happen often enough to be a bother, so I don't think anyone has ever really investigated it. It was bugging me, especially after it happened to one of us, so I'd love to get to the bottom of it.

Thanks!

 

[hummer3331973]

This is actually happening to our Definity as well. I always thought that the user just unknowingly dialed *3 to enable SAC. Until it happened to me.

It'll be interesting to know if there's really a fix on it.