Can you transfer multiple Users to the Same Extension?

farrshepherd · ‎10-23-2009

We just installed a UC540 for a company. The dial by name and dial by extension is working fine. The company is a marketing and PR company and each employee is in charge of one or multiple accounts. My clients would like their system to be set up such that a caller can call in and if they don't know the extension or the name of their rep, they can dial their company name (ex. acme) in and it will take them to the correct person. It seems like I should be able to set up users in the UC540 that are named the name of the companies like acme, then the system would allow callers to dial in the name acme and it would transfer them to an extension. I just need to know how to get it to transfer the caller to an alternate user on the UC540, say John Doe at extension 150. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can acheive that?

Saurabh Verma · ‎10-27-2009

Here's a suggestion:

a) Using CCA, create a user with company name, for example Company Acme, Firstname Lastname format, since last by name prompts for last name first.

b) Assign a number to this user, for example 199 (or any other available number).

c) In the user extension settings, set the call-forward busy and no-answer (change the no-answer timer to a very short duration) target to John Doe at extension 150.

With the above, when someone keys in Acme at the auto attendant, their call will momentarily get transferred to 199 and to extension 150 from there.

HTH,
Saurabh

farrshepherd · ‎10-27-2009

Thanks Saurabh, this is helpful. I stumbled on this last night and that works great. The only thing I would like to change is that the minimum timeout on the forward no answer is 3 seconds. This cuts down on the total time the phone will ring before it will send the caller to VM. Is there a way to increase how long the phone will ring before it goes to VM? If so I can increase the total call by 3 seconds to offset the 3 seconds it is trying to ring the fake extension before it forwards.

Thanks,

Farr

Saurabh Verma · ‎10-27-2009

Yes, there is a call-forward no-answer timer which by default is set to 10 seconds. You can change this to suit your dial plan.

-Saurabh

farrshepherd · ‎10-27-2009

OK great. What I am unclear on is the time designation. If you specify 10 seconds, is that how long the system waits to forward it after trying the original extension, or is that how long it will ring after it is forwarded?

Saurabh Verma · ‎10-27-2009

OK great. What I am unclear on is the time designation. If you specify
10 seconds, is that how long the system waits to forward it after
trying the original extension, or is that how long it will ring after
it is forwarded?

The call-forward no-answer timer is associated with a directory number. If you have setup extension 199 with CFNA timer of 3 seconds, that means that the system will wait for 3 seconds for extension 199 to answer the call, if the call is not answered in 3 seconds, then the system will forward the call to the target extension (or number) defined. Consider the following example:

199 ---> CFNA timeout 3 seconds, target 198

198 ---> CFNA timeout 5 seconds, target 197

197 ---> CFNA timeout 7 seconds, target 196

Incoming calls to extension 199 will ring for 3 seconds, after that the system will forward the call (if not answered) to extension 198 which in turn will ring for 5 seconds. If extension 198 does not answer the call for 5 seconds, then the system will forward it to extension 197. Similarly ext. 197 will ring for 7 seconds before the call is forwarded to 196.

Hope that clarifies.

It appears that the original end user company will be wanting MANY of these "Virtual" users so this leads to my question

If there is a need to forward multiple incoming calls, you may think about setting the target of the dummy (virtual) extension to a hunt-group. Make sure there are sufficient users configured in the hunt-group to handle multiple incoming calls. You don't need to create multiple virtual extensions. Just one for each company. As soon as the call is forwarded, the extension gets freed up. Also, if you are anticipating multiple simultaneous calls, you may want to configure the virtual extension with Octal line (instead of the default dual-line).

How does the creation of these "Virtual" users effect the licensing of 'users'

Each virtual user will use up one system license. Note that there are a couple of floating licenses that are given away with the system - the number varies depending on the system size.

HTH,

Saurabh

sreed · ‎10-27-2009

This is a question that is off the question line but extends from it

It appears that the original end user company will be wanting MANY of these "Virtual" users so this leads to my question.

How does the creation of these "Virtual" users effect the licensing of 'users'.

All of the versions of the systems have 'Max Users' limits.

Are these license users counted by the number of User Extensions with hardware

or

is the number of User Extensions total as listed in CCA > Telephony > Voice > User Extensions Tab which includes any "Virtual" users, what is 'counted' against the license

farrshepherd · ‎10-30-2009

As far as I can tell, the licenses are based on users with phones, but I may be mistaken.

Following up with my other topic, I did not realize there was also a CLI command:
call-forward all

This is better for our scenario since there is no real user to answer the virtual extension. If the inbound caller calls in currently there is a 3 second delay until it rings the desk. With call-forward all it rights the desk of the user the call is forwarded to right away.