[Asterisk-Users] Simple phone question

[Joe Greco]

> Well basically we are a small operation.  To begin with we really don't want
> any voicemenu ("press 1 for this, press 2 for that").  I just want all the
> incoming calls to ring to the 2 receptionists (and then maybe everywhere
> after a while).  However, on our current analog (comdial) system you can see
> all 8 lines and they flash when a call is incoming.  I'm worried if the
> lines all start ringing (or at least 3 or 4 of them), they will have no idea
> how many calls are coming in.  Everyone else can live with a regular phone.
> So, do regular people even need anything more than a 1 line phone?

That's very helpful to understanding what you want to do.

If there's no differentiation between any of the lines, there's no
particular reason that anything beyond one-lines phones will help anyone,
even your receptionists.  (I'd probably still get them nicer multiline
phones for future expansion though)

I believe that the downside with a receptionist strategy is that it is
hard to know when various extensions are in use; something like Flash
Operator Panel running on a PC by the receptionists could help out here.

You can certainly set up a number of things to deal with this.  For
example, to do the initial ring of your receptionists, set up a queue
listing them both, and then add another penalty that rings all phones
if they don't answer.  See:

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+call+queues

There are a variety of ways to do transfers.  On a nice SIP phone like the
7960 it's just a few buttons.

I'm not really sure as to the best way to display how many calls are coming
in, maybe FOP handles that too (I haven't looked at it, we don't use Flash).

Does this give you a little help?

Regards,

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.