Help with BLF/monitoring lines

[jmysliwiec]

We have recently converted all our law offices over to using Cisco IP phones, model 7962. Recently, a few secretaries have had the following quesiton. Here is the scenario.

The secretary is set up with an attorney's extension on her phone to monitor. The problem is when she is not looking directly at the line when her attorney's phone rings, she has no idea if he/she is currently on a call or not. The secretary will contact the attorney to let him now there is a call waiting for him/her and the attorney gets upset about being interrupted while on the other call.

If the secretary does not see the red indicator (has her back to her phone) and a call comes in, she looks and sees a blinking amber light. The icon shows a ringing phone for her attorney's line (not a double handset icon). The line indicator (the number to the extreme left of the incoming call window, usually a "1" or "2") is of no use because the attorney my be on line 2 when another call comes in, and that new call will show up as line 1.

Am I missing something or is there another way to go about this?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Nick.Britt_2]

hmmmm, I am not sure this would help but this is how I would go about it.

Set the busy trigger to 1 instead of 2 or more then set the secretaries ext as the busy forward busy internal and external.

If the lawyer is on the phone then the call will be sent to the secretary.

is my understanding correct that the secretary does not see the phone before it rings and therefore is un aware the the attorney is in a call?

[jmysliwiec]

Your understanding is correct. If she is talking to someone or turned from the phone she cannot tell, when an incoming call rings on her attroney's line, if the line is currently in use.

I tested this on two phones that I have set up in my office. Unless you are looking at the phone and see the red light on the extension prior to a call coming in, there is now way to tell tha the line was in use.

Thanks for the reply.

[Rob Huffman]

Hi James,

This method was used in older 3.x builds before the Multiple Calls per Line was added in CUCM 4.x. If the Secretary has extra Line Buttons on their phone, this is a good solution.

We still use this for some users who prefer the visual aspect of this setup, which sounds like it might appeal to some of your users as well

This document shows how to use Partitions and Calling Search Spaces to configure multiple lines on one phone with the same DN. It is assumed that the user wants all incoming calls to start on line 1 and forward to subsequent lines if line 1 is busy.

Configuring a Single Dialed Number on Multiple Lines

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/ps556/products_tech_note09186a008009409c.shtml

Cheers!

Rob