Night Answer

[technology]

On our old key system we had a night answer feature that rang all of the phones after the receptionist went home for the evening. Personally, I found this feature very annoying, but our building administrators would like this feature back.

I can't seem to find a reasonable way to accomplish this. I can set a hunt group, but it rings the DNs sequentially. After you ring three or four DNs, the caller has given up. I have a combination of 7910+ and 7960 phones. I could add an additional DN on the 7960s and forward all calls to that DN, but that doesn't help the 7910+ phones.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Steve

[pwauthy]

Steve,

IMHO this is a basic feature of any voice mail system. If you have one, you may look this way. If not Cisco offers Unity but many VMS can be used with SDMI.

[rvincent]

Steve:

you could try setting up a night bell arrangement via an FXS port. I set up the following at one of my sites and it works great: when receptionist leaves, inc. call fwds to Unity - where caller will be given option to stay on line for further assistance - then Unity will ring night bell (which is in call pickup group with all IP phone users) - if no one answers call, night bell extension call fwd/na back to Unity where caller is prompted to leave message in general mailbox.

Rob

[nomsdos]

I would be interested to see how you did this. I am having the same problem. Thanks.

[tonygauderman]

You could also use Web Attendant, and have the last number in the hunt group go to the bell... as far as the previous solution with manually forwarding to Unity, you would either create a mail box for the extension being forwarded and then handle the call based on rules in the mail box, or you could just build a forwarded call route that would route the call based on the forwarding station

[nomsdos]

Rob, Could you possibly send me a sample of how you did this. I would be very interested in seeing what you have set up. Thanks.

Ross Rehart

rehartr@quadrep.com

[mmitchell]

How does one on the CallManager side retrieve the ringing call from a 7910/7960. If the call is ringing an FXS port, how can the CallManager grab this? Thanks

[ehensersky]

I have set this up with an FXS port as an MGCP gateway and added DN "1234" to it. I set up a call pickup group and added that number to the configuration of the DN on the gateway. Now you can either assign the same pick up group to all your phones and they will just have to hit "Pickup" on their phone or they can select "GPickup" and then the pickup group number assigned to the night bell. In my case we added a speed dial to the 7960s labled "Night Bell" and gave it the DN of the pick up number.