Setting up an interesting receptionist position 2

[elturko]

I’m trying to set up a receptionist position where there are 3 DNs to manage, each with their own mailbox. The phone is a 3904. System is a brand new Option 11 with Succession 3.0 software and CallPilot 2.01. Here’s the situation.

1601 is the main call in line for one division (“RO”). During business hours, it should ring on the set, and go to an auto attendant after 4 rings if not answered. One of the menu choices will be to leave a message for the RO division. Additionally, this DN needs to be able to be forwarded to another DN if the receptionist is not there.

1804 is the main call in line for another division (“LC”). During business hours, it should ring at the send, go to AA after 4 rings. Again, there’s a menu choice to leave a message for the LC division. This DN does not need forward capability.

1894 is the personal DN for the receptionist. It was created to help keep personal and internal calls separate from inbound calls from the public. No special treatment here, just rings on the set, goes to voice mail after 4 rings.

Our phone vendor says this can’t be done without having at least 2 phones on the front desk (and then not even quite the way we want it), but I don’t agree. Here’s what I’m thinking.

1601 and 1804 can be SDNs in CallPilot to handle the time/day determination. If during business hours, the call would be transferred to 3601 and 3804 respectively (made-up DNs merely to present the calls to on the set). If not during business hours, the call would transfer to 1600 and 1803, SDNs containing the individual menus. After 4 rings on either 3601 and 3804, the call would also go to 1600 or 1803. Then, we can set up mailboxes 3601 and 3804, and have the appropriate menu choice drop the caller in express messaging for these boxes. To make it easy to distinguish where the messages are, the set could have an XMWK key for each of the mailboxes.

(Minor twist: is there any reason 3601 and 3804 couldn’t be MCRs, in case future call handling space is needed? This isn’t a big deal)

Does this make sense? Is there a better way to accomplish what we need? The way I see it, the only “strange” thing would be that the made-up DNs 3601 and 3804 would also need to be set up as a phantom TN to allow the hunting to 1600 and 1803, right?

Thanks, and I’ll be interested to hear what you guys think!

Matt

 

[atascoman]

I think you are solid on the voicemail piece of the pie,since voicemail looks at the actual extension that is being sent to voicemail. The only area I see you having a potential problem is the forwarding of the lines. When a phone is forwarded all of the lines that are MARP'ed on the phone will follow the forwarding.

Your idea of the phantom TN may solve this though. You could biuld a phantom TN each for 1804 and 1894 and have that phantom TN do the FDN and HUNT functions, leaving your 3904 to handle all the forwarding for 1601.

Hope that helps.

 

[johnpoole]

got to agree with everyone except your vendor (time to shop around)..you might need to build soft exten's to handle the fna's or hunts, just use a phamtom for your marp, if you don't have a loop for that, just use ports 16-31 on a digital card and maro the phones there, Don't forget ithe idc tables in ld 49, they can change a number before the switch sees it, they don't do tod but you do have a diff table for day and night as controlled by you consoles. when my last console goes into nights, my incoming xxxx, hit the night idc and changes to xxx1.. another way to control after hours call flow, tod in mail works in your case but don't forget to do day of week and holiday schedules. i hate callouts on christmas day due to that problem.

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[elturko]

Thanks, guys, for confirming this. We set it up today and it works great!

We did run into one VERY minor caveat. Between the time-of-day application (1601) and the auto attendant (1600) during off hours, there are a few quick bursts of ringback. Is there any, preferably easy, way to silence this ringing? This is so minor, and the people who we had test the set up didn't notice it until I pointed it out, so I'm certainly not losing any sleep over it.

Thanks again!

--Matt

 

[roupe]

3601 and 3804 can't be phantom dns and also appear on a set for answering. When the phantom dn receives a call is rings the default call forward target only... No problem with using MCR except if a caller is ringing the MCR dn and someone else calls at the same time, the second caller gets busy/hunt treatment..