Creative Hunt Group Ideas Sought

[TONY SMITH]

Hi,

These are the customer requirements, for the customer facing inbound sales phones at each site  ...

(1) All designated phones to ring simultaneously

(2) Caller to hear busy if all phones are in use (no queuing or message)

(3) If a phone is unattended, and a new call comes in, then any of the other phones should immediately start to ring when they go back on hook

The last requirement is one that is not met with a conventional hunt group and line group, because in that case the decision as to which phones should ring is make when the call first comes in.

The customer's current configuration is to have shared lines, each with a Busy Trigger of one, each line shared across each group of phones.  So for a group of four sales phone there are four lines, each with a line appearance on each of four phones.    Each line has Max Calls of at least two, otherwise the person is not able to transfer the caller.  

This provides correct behaviour, but only if the phones are used only for incoming calls.   If the phones are used for outbound calls as well, this configuration fails because the phone may pick up a line that's already in use, meaning that the hunt group will not go busy.

Any suggestions?   CUCM will be 11.5, an upgrade to redesign of their existing deployment.

Tony S

[Chavdar_Baramov]

My strong suggestion is to get rid of the shared lines and leave each phone with its own DN and linking those to the Hunt list.

This way you will be sure that if someone is on call, no matter outbound or inbound that he will be not part of the hunting algorithm.

[TONY SMITH]

That would be the conventional approach.   In discussions with the customer his objection is due to the point (3) above.   The suggested work around of using Pick Up isn't apparently acceptable, reportedly it was tried in the past.

Essentially at this stage I've told them that we're not aware of any means of meeting all three requirements.  Their current configuration with shared lines meets (1) and (3), or a conventional hunt group meets (1) and (2).

[Chavdar_Baramov]

They have work education problem... anyway my next suggestion is ext. mobility and those "agents" to log out when their phone is unattended.

[TONY SMITH]

HLog would be simpler, I really can't see their sales guys dealing with EM login/logout.  However I can't see how it would solve that requirement in any case, if one phone from the group was logged out either by EM or HLog, no call would be offered to it so there'd be no ringing call to pickup.

The problem is that they are used to the function of their whacky shared line configuration, and not at the moment prepared to accept anything that reduces it's function.

[keanej]

Am I missing something here...

If 5 people have number 2001 programmed as their second line

Then...

(1) All designated phones to ring simultaneously (when not busy)

(2) Caller to hear busy if all phones are in use (no queuing or message)

I suppose maybe i'm missing something on 3 but..

if an phone is unattended and a new call comes in

the unattended phone starts ringing and then they can hangup their call

and simply use group pick up to answer

Might need to play with 'ring no answer' timers but sounds close.

No ??

(3) If a phone is unattended, and a new call comes in, then any of the other phones should immediately start to ring when they go back on hook