[Asterisk-Users] newbie question; can * screen calls?

[Ken Alker]

--On Friday, January 09, 2004 10:11 PM -0600 Alan Andrews 
<alan at tieless.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 2004-01-09 at 20:55, Ken Alker wrote:
>> Does * have the capability to screen calls?  IOW, if someone calls in
>> from  outside (ie. not a local extension), can * ask the calling party
>> to state  their name, record it, ring the recipient, play the caller's
>> name for the  recipient, then give the recipient the choice of answering
>> or forcing the  call to voice mail?
>
> I thought that's what caller ID was for.

There are many cases where caller ID will not suffice:

1) many people share the same phone number (a family, or roommates)
2) a company where their entire group of phone numbers appears as one 
calling number (thus, you don't know who it is within the company that is 
calling)
3) someone calling from a number that isn't theirs (payphone, friend's 
house, borrowed cell, work cell, etc)
4) CallerID is blocked by caller
5) In my area caller ID is about $7.50/mo./line which makes it priced too 
high to be a justifiable expense for my company.

I find that callerID is only effective in about 25% of the cases (I have it 
at home).  If you don't have callerID, automated call screening is the next 
best thing.  In fact, I have nearly a 100% success rate with it, so it's 
better than callerID, IMHO.  I use this feature on a Nortel mudular ICS. 
They refer to it as "screened transfer".  It saves me from having to speak 
with sales people who make it past my employee barricade, or who figure out 
my direct extension.  I'd guess it saves me an average of 20 minutes per 
day; not bad if you add it up.

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 Ken Alker         ken at impulse.net            ham radio: KA6SDU
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