How would you do this?

[ug5]

I have a customer who is basically trying to appear bigger than they are. They have an IVR menu with 5 options that point at 5 ring groups - thing is, all 5 of the ring groups ring all of the phones.

The way they differentiate what IVR option was pressed is by a BLF key I have pointed at a dummy extension that rings along with the corresponding ring group. This requires having a phone with 5 extensions registered to it, just sitting there to show BLF status on the other phones.

Anybody know of a better way to do this? They apparently had an ancient analog system years ago that had functionality sorta like this, so they're used to it, and they like being able to answer "Hello, this is the _____ department" based on what IVR option was picked.

 

[bcmike]

The easy answer is different ring tones for each IVR option with a call display prefix, ie prefix the call display with "Sales".

As far as I know (I'm a Fusion PBX noob) you can set the ring tone by adding an alert-info statement to the incoming call as per here: https://www.pbxforums.com/threads/distinctive-ring-for-local-calls.528/

You might be able to manipulate the inbound call display in the same way, if not though you can create a call center queue and there's an option to manipulate the inbound caller ID there.

Note to Fusion PBX developers: FreePBX allows you to insert and alert-info string and a call display prefix string in its ring group options. This has been a very useful feature for me in the past.

 

[ug5]

The easy answer is different ring tones for each IVR option with a call display prefix, ie prefix the call display with "Sales".

As far as I know (I'm a Fusion PBX noob) you can set the ring tone by adding an alert-info statement to the incoming call as per here: https://www.pbxforums.com/threads/distinctive-ring-for-local-calls.528/

You might be able to manipulate the inbound call display in the same way, if not though you can create a call center queue and there's an option to manipulate the inbound caller ID there.

Note to Fusion PBX developers: FreePBX allows you to insert and alert-info string and a call display prefix string in its ring group options. This has been a very useful feature for me in the past.

I forgot to mention - they do not want inbound calls with prefixs or distinctive rings - or well, pretty much any other logical or efficient means of doing this aside from what they are used to. Retraining was basically an unacceptable option according to the customer.

The hacky way I have it setup now works fine, customer is happy and quiet. I'm mostly just wondering if there is a better way to show blf from the specific ring groups aside from having a physical phone registered to each of the dummy extensions.

 

[markjcrane]

I forgot to mention - they do not want inbound calls with prefixs or distinctive rings - or well, pretty much any other logical or efficient means of doing this aside from what they are used to. Retraining was basically an unacceptable option according to the customer.

The hacky way I have it setup now works fine, customer is happy and quiet. I'm mostly just wondering if there is a better way to show blf from the specific ring groups aside from having a physical phone registered to each of the dummy extensions.

There is currently no BLF for ring groups other than how you are currently doing it.

 

[bcmike]

Can you not just have five fake extensions that just ring without having them registered to a phone? As long as you don't terminate somewhere wouldn't they just ring forever?

 

[tag915]

Typically this would be done using CID prefixes. Using BLF is an interesting hack though. Not sure if you can use BLF keys with Queues but that could be another way.