Best way to approach branch office reception call handling?

[Sean K]

Forgive the dumb question but I'm new at this (and thanks for any help). And sorry if this is more a Unity question than a CM question.

I have a CUCM BE 5000 with mostly 6941 handsets connected in my branch offices, which are mostly small. In some of the bigger offices there is a front desk/reception/admin role and these people need a more functional phone than the 6941, as they sometimes need to handle multiple simultaneous calls. For various reasons this is a 6961 rather than any other model. I want to configure their main number in such a way that it steps over say three lines, so:

- if the phone is idle, it will ring against button/line 1

- if line one is busy with an inbound or outbound call, then it will step to line 2, if both are busy, then to line 3

- after that it should move to a greeting that advises all the lines are busy, please either wait 15 seconds or press 1 to leave a message

- If the operator is on line 1 and line 2 rings, then they can tell the person they're speaking to they're going on hold, then press 2 to pick up the second call, etc.

- if the operator is busy and they don't answer line 2 (or 3) when it rings, then it must go straight to the handler/greeting.

- Oh and voicemail when left must of course light up the message waiting light and deliver the broken dial tone

I can do the call handler and 1 to leave a greeting, and with enough mucking around can probably get it to wait for 15 seconds then revert to the pilot number. And I feel like it should be easy to get the rest done too, by configuring pilot extension plus two dummy DNs on the frist 3 buttons of the phone, then setting the CFB options on each DN to step up to the next DN in sequence, and the final one plus the CFNA options to go to the call handler.

So,

DN        CFB      CFNA

8400      8491     VM

8491      8492     8499

8492      8499     8499

Where 8499 is the handler, 8400 the pilot, and 8491,2 the steppers. But this doesn't work, and it inexplicably keeps going to the default Unity welcome message rather than the handler. Test procedure is to call out on L1 from the 6961, then call 8400 from another phone (which steps to L2 but doesn't ring), then don't answer.

The first "VM" option above means the checkbox for voicemail in the DN setup, and I'm assuming in the 8499 input handler I can leave a message for 8400 specifically, if not I'll make the VM go to 8499 as well.

I thought of using a hunt group (8400) with 8491, 2, 3 as the DNs in it, with the voicemail on the huntgroup, but clearly don't understand how hunt group voicemail handling works. Is this a better way to handle my problem (or are both stupid ideas and there's a better way yet)?

Thanks

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

By default Unity Connection will match against the first redirecting number, not the last (i.e. 8400 not 8492). In this situation the call handler would need to have the extension of 8400 in order to match. If you have changed the global setting in CXN to use the last vs. first then you would want the extension on the call handler to be 8492. This all assumes that you're using the Voicemail call forward checkbox on 8492 and not a directed transfer to voicemail config.

A hunt pilot/list/line group can also accomplish what you want but doesn't offer an obvious advantage here.

Please remember to rate helpful responses and identify helpful or correct answers.

[Sean K]

Thanks for that useful reply, it pointed me in the right direction to achieve what I was after. The bit I was missing was setting up 849X as alternate extensions on the mailbox. With that in place I can now just use the VM forward checkbox and some basic CFB to the next number down and it all works pretty much like I need it to.