UC500: How to make a new call while a call is incoming on a 7942 phone?

[Ruud van Strijp]

Hello,

We have an UC540 with 7942's and SPA504G's. Most of these phones are together in a blast/parallel group, since we get many calls that are for 'just anyone who picks up the call'. Since we don't want to have to do a call-pickup every time (we get around 3-5 calls per minute), we decided a blast/parallel group works best for us. However, because of the constant amount of calls we have, it often occurs that we try to make a call while a call is already coming in on our phone. When a call comes in, I get the 'seized' softkeys instead of the 'on hook' softkeys, so I can't make a new phonecall. I'd first have to pick up the call or wait for a colleague to pick it up.

Is there any way to push the incoming call away from my phone, but still leave it ring for my colleagues? I know that if I press the DND button the call will go to my callforward noanswer, but the CFNA is the same huntgroup I'm in... So by pressing DND I only forward the call to myself.

Thanks,

Ruud

[mcasimirc63]

If you configured more than one line on your phone, you can select the other line by pressing the button and then make a second call.  So if the phone is ringing, press button 2 for the second line and it should bring up an off hook call state.

[Steven DiStefano]

I found something very interesting a while ago regarding this.   Of course, a 7942 has 2 buttons, so Marcus is spot on with his suggestion, and I agree with him.

I was once playing with hunt groups and blast groups.You may want to try this yourself.

In the seized state during an incoming call, only ANSWER and DND appear according to the default ephone template 16 used for UC500 (for this phone type) if you only have Parallel Hunt groups (Blast Group) configured.

However, when you add regular hunt groups (in additiion), then HLOG gets added as well (Hunt Group Login/out) as a softkey in the seized state.  I am pretty sure creating any hunt group system wide, would ammend your ephone-template-16, so thats a little trick to get that key to appear in SEIZED state.  Since you said you created hunt groups, you should also see that.  HLOG Doesnt work for Parallel Blast groups though.

So if you converted to Hunt group (Seq, Cir, MIDLE), then HLOG will work to remove you from the hunt group for the next call.  It also displays a little text message on the screen saying something to the effect of "Logged out of Hunt Group".  Subsequent calls will be diverted past this phone until you manually press it again (in IDLE STATE) to resume membership.

But I did find that DND DOES silence a live call ringing into a blast group member.  So I dont agree with the behavior you reported.  Not sure if it was related to my HLOG or not, but please double check that.  I dont see why you cant use DND to do exactly what you desire.

[Ruud van Strijp]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I currently am using a button with a second line indeed, as a workaround for this problem. I say workaround because the following scenario still doesn't work: When I have a phonecall going on that I want to forward to someone else, I want to press the transfer softkey. However, when a new call is coming in while I am dialing the number, the new call is highlighted and I won't be able to finish typing the number where I am transfering the call to. Pressing the second line button will only make me able to start a new outgoing call, but I am not able to forward the call I'm already having on my first line button.

The Hlog button is not an option because we don't want to log in and out of huntgroups all the time. We just want to be able to 'click away' an incoming call. Like you said the DND button silences the ring, but the call is still ringing on my screen. And it's the ringing on the screen that disables me from being able to dial a new number since the new incoming call is highlighted instead of the screen where I was typing a number.