SPA504G Unable to Transfer Established Call

[Ricardo Villa]

Hi.

We are trying to figure out how to transfer a an established call on the SPA504G while a second call is incoming.   At present, the receptionist has to answer every single incoming call before the XFER softkey is seen again.   This is completely unpractical for a receptionist that may have 4 or more calls coming in at the same time.  When the receptionist has an established call and a second call is coming in, the only softkeys seen are 'ignore' and 'answer'.  Trying to add xfer from the 'Programable Softkeys - Ringing Key List' section yields no result.

All other phones from the previous line (ie, SPA942, SPA962..) worked differently.  When the second call was coming in, your soft keys would not change.  You could still XFER the current extablished call before you answered the next.  How can we make the new phones behave in that way??

Thanks,

Ricardo

[Ruud van Strijp]

Hello Ricardo,

We had an issue with exactly this phone as well two weeks ago. We found out the whole SPA5xx range only supports two active calls at the same time. According to Cisco this even includes the SPA525G(2). In practice this means that while you have one call on hold and get a second call, you cannot forward any of these calls because that would mean you'd start a 3th call.

The solution our supplier (Ingram Micro) gave us, is switching to either one of these phones:

- 7911 : 6 call limitation

- 7942 : 8 call limitation (because you can't get any higher than an octo line on CME)

They weren't sure about the limitations of 69xx phones yet. I still want to test that myself soon.

Since it's a receptionist, I'd recommend using at least a 7942 but if they can spare the money I'd even go for a 7975. This is a large color, touchsensitive screen. Works pretty well for receptionists. Other option of course is using the Smart CallConnect Operator, however I haven't tried the limitations with this yet.

Ruud van Strijp

[Ricardo Villa]

Hi Ruud,

Thanks for your reply.  The thing that still confuses me is that I am still unable to transfer even with only 1 call on hold.  Technically I only have 1 call.  The scenario is:

1)  I receive one call and am talking.  The person is saying "please transfer me to extension 200".

2)  At this time a second call is ringing inbound and the XFER softkey dissappears and is replaced by ANSWER or IGNORE.

3)  I am unable to transfer the call I am on until I answer that second inbound call.

This is simply unpractical.  We have now purchased on older SPA962 and it works perfectly in this regard.  We can transfer any existing call without having to answer an inbound ringing call first.  If there is a way to do this without having to resort to buying old phones or phones that cost much more like the 7942 then I would love to know.

Thanks,

Ricardo

[Ruud van Strijp]

Hello Ricardo,

The problem is that CME gives the command 'max-calls-per-button 2' to all SPA504G phones. So even if you didn't pick the second incoming call up yet, it still counts as a second call for CME.

Ruud

[c.holloway]

Ricardo,

I don't know if this is still going on but I'm having a similar issue.  Ruud is right about the max calls per button issue but that is not what is going on in your scenario. 

Basically in a CME and UC500 series the newest call always seems to have preference.  Thus the phone will always show the softkeys for the incoming call.  You can use the D-pad or the line buttons to manually go back to the line you were on and once it's selected you should see your Hold, EndCall, Transfer softkeys again.

I'm still searching for a way to turn off this auto-inbound select in CME as I've only seen how to turn it off in CUCM