Night service - For blast group

[smunzani]

Hi,

Is there a way to setup night service for a blast group instead of individual lines? The CCA doesn't give me an option to setup night service option for the blast group.

At the moment I have a blast group for the incoming mainline that goes to 2 receptionists and 2 other people. The company has an after hours answering service to take the call for the mainline. All I want is night service to trigger for the blast group so instead of ringing those 4 phones, call forwards to an external number.

Thanks,

Sam

[Darren DeCroock]

Hello Sam,

It is not possible to setup night service on the blast group directly.  The way to accomplish this is to configure a "floating extension", and set a "call forward all" to the blast group, and configure night service on the "floating extension".  Then direct the calls coming into your "mainline" to the "floating extension".   The call flow will look like this:

Mainline  -->  floating extension --> Day --> "call forward all" to blast group.

                                                    Night --> "call forward night service" to external number.

The "floating extension" is basically used to direct the incoming calls from your mainline to the blast group during the day, and to an external number when "night service" is active.

Thank you,

Darren

[smunzani]

Hi Darren,

Understood. However do I need to tie up a phone for the floating extension? OR can I simply configure a floating extension through CCA and setup call forward all from there?

Thanks,

Sam

[Darren DeCroock · Accepted solution]

Hello Sam,

No, you do not have to tie up a phone for this.

Configure>Telephony>Users/Extensions>Users/Phones

On this screen there should be a "Floating Extensions" tab at the top.  Just configure the new "floating extension" there, and it has a place to insert the "call forward all" extension.

Thank you,

Darren

[smunzani]

Perfect. Thank you.

[smunzani]

BTW, do you think instead of blast group and floating extension a shared line would be better choice? I can setup night service on the shared line plus the line would be shared by 4 people who receives the inbound calls. Shared line can also help if one receptionist puts the call on hold and other wants to check if the line gets on hold for too long. I will give that a swag in the lab and see how well that works over a blast group.

Thanks,

Sam

[Darren DeCroock]

Hello Sam,

You could use a shared line, but then you would only be able to handle one incoming call on that line.  If a second caller called in while that line was in use, the person on the call would hear the call-waiting beep, but the other phones would not ring.  (I am pretty sure that is how it would work, but I have not tested it.)   As far as putting calls on hold.  If they use the park feature, there is a recall option to let you know the call is still there.

Overall, I think that a blast group is the best option, but it really comes down to their preference.

Thank you,

Darren

[Bobby Rhone]

I have basically the same setup:

Mainline --> Auto Attendant --> (Press 1) - >Blast Group

Right now, the night service is toggling on and off according to schedule.  I'd like to be able to manually turn it off/on.  Should I put a floating extension between the mainline and auto attendant?  How do I get the ability for certain phones to turn it off/on?

Thanks,

Bobby

[Alexander Maroukian]

Hi Bobby,

Yes you should add it between mainline and auto attendant and in the nighth service settings there is opitio to put a code to manually turn off and on the night sevice.  You should also select the extensions of real phones to toggle it on and off and for these extensions select only night service bell.

HTH,

Alex

*Please rate helpful answers

[Bobby Rhone]

Thanks Alex,

This worked perfect for me.

Bobby

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPad App

[.daniels]

Hi Darren,

I have also this setup and work fine, calls are forwarded if I enter the external number in the night screen screen.

However we want to be able to 'change' the call forwarding manually from a handset. I have tried setting the floating extension in night server screen to forward to an extension and put call forwarding manually on this on this phone but it does not seem to want to forward the calls.

Any Ideas?

Regards,

David.