Manager/PA phone set up

[Charles Rayer]

Hi All,

I need to set up a solution for our 3 PA's in the Director's corridor to be able to:

Intercept calls for the directors and then transfer them to the Director

See when the Directors are on the phone

See when a particular phone is ringing

The Directors all have 7942's and the PA's have 7962's

There are 6 Directors and 3 PA's. Each PA is set to personally manage 2 Directors each, but also needs the ability to manage the other 4 when the other PA's are away or busy.

Any ideas?

Thanks for reading

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Charles,

What are you running for call control? CUCM or CME?

Cheers!

Rob

"Show a little faith, there's magic in the night" - Springsteen

[Gordon Ross]

When you say intercept calls: Do you mean intercepy EVERY call, or just intercept most calls ?

GTG

[Charles Rayer]

Hi Rob - I am using CUCM

Hi Gordon - I would say most calls. As each PA is directly responsible for 2 Directors they can't control every call, so they ofer a "best effort" kind of service.

I've updated the setup today by creating secondary numbers for each Director and adding the Directors' main numbers back to the PA's 7962s, so when a PA intercepts a call they can transfer that call to the secondary number, which works well. They can see which Director is receiving a call and I can set the alert type for each Director.

But the main PA is still moaning that it's different form the "single call ringing button" Nortel feature and that she shouldn't have to remember 2 numbers for the Directors (secondary numbers range from 111 to 116 !!)

I've told her the system now is temporary, which she believes, but she still wants a simpler system, if possible.

[Gordon Ross]

The way we setup similar things is to have two buttons per Manager. The first has a shared line apperance of the Manager (so the PA can pickup the call) and the second is a BLF SD button, so the PA can put the call back. Unfortunately for you, this would require you to get sidecars & power bricks for all your PAs.

I agree with you, though, that CUCM's abilities in this aren't as good as traditional phone systems. I think it's because CUCM is trying to be too flexible & clever.

GTG

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Charles,

You have a number of options here that may be helpful. You could use;

Cisco Unified Communications Manager Assistant With Proxy Line Support

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/admin/7_0_1/ccmfeat/fsipma.html#wpxref25292

Or perhaps Busy Lamp with pickup;

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/admin/7_0_1/ccmfeat/fscpickg.html#wp1094928

Or you could set up Intercom so if the PA answers the call they can put it on hold and contact the Director;

https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-4194

I'm curious what the Nortel did that the PA liked so much?? I've worked with Nortel for many years

and haven't found many things that it did that CUCM can't Single call Ringing (SCR - xxxx) doesn't

allow you to transfer back to the Director number so I'm not sure what she is missing.

Cheers!

Rob

"Show a little faith, there's magic in the night" - Springsteen

[Gordon Ross]

Rob,

Where's this "Auto Call Pickup" option, mentioned in that CUCM manual ? I can't see it either on the BLF SD button, or on the phone.

GTG

[Rob Huffman]

Hey Gordon,

Hope all is well my friend

The following service parameters enable configuration of the enhanced  call pickup features; they display under the Clusterwide Parameters  (Feature - Call Pickup) section in the Cisco CallManager Administration  Service Parameters Configuration window:

Auto  Call Pickup Enabled Configure this service parameter to enable or  disable the auto pickup feature by choosing one of the following  options:

True Set this service parameter to True to enable the automatic, or one-touch, pickup functionality.

False Set this service parameter to False to use the existing call pickup and group call pickup functionality.

The default value specifies False to retain backward compatibility with earlier versions of Cisco CallManager.

Cheers!

Rob

"Show a little faith, there's magic in the night" - Springsteen

[Gordon Ross]

Rob - you're the man :-)

GTG