[asterisk-users] Transfer/Park Question.

[Daniel Hazelbaker]

On Oct 9, 2008, at 2:59 PM, Brent Davidson wrote:

> I've got a situation where I need to use a transfer to the parking lot
> as hold, but am not going to use BLF indicators on the phone to pick  
> up
> the parked calls so I need to hear the 3-digit extension after the
> transfer.  I'm using Snom 300 phones and have tried setting a
> programmable button to Key Event F_TRANSFER 700, which successfully  
> does
> the transfer but cuts off audio so you don't hear the extension to
> dial.   Same with setting a Park Orbit.  I can use the DTMF button  
> type
> to send the transfer command and then the extension but then the  
> person
> doing the parking hears all of the tones, which is annoying.
>
> Is there any way to set up the transfer silently and still get the
> parking slot extension back?

Short answer: currently no.

Medium answer: I just rolled out 60+ Snom phones (300s and 320s) and  
we do call parking with DTMF.  People were used to just hitting PARK  
and their phone displaying the park extension (old NEC system).  I  
didn't tell anybody anything except "it will speak the extension back  
to you" and nobody has complained about hearing the DTMF digits.  We  
chose a 3 digit code (#92 I believe) to try an alleviate the  
possibility of somebody accidently parking a call  while filling out a  
DTMF based form/menu system, but in theory you could assign just * to  
park and only deal with 1 tone.  Just be aware that if the user needs  
to hit * for anything else, they won't be able to use it.

Long answer: Snom phones support text messages to the phone that  
automatically display.  I am looking for a way to use that in  
conjunction with Snom's ParkOrbit feature (which does work, you just  
don't hear the extension).  Basically Asterisk would do a normal park  
and then trigger a SIP NOTIFY message to the parkING phone that says  
"Parked: 701".  The message can be cleared by the user by pressing X,  
or ideally Asterisk would auto-clear the message after 10 seconds (or  
whatever).

In theory I can do the "long answer" now with a Manager application,  
but I don't like the idea of relying on an external application.  If  
it crashes or locks up for whatever reason then suddenly people get  
parked and nobody knows where.

Also be aware that in 1.2.x and 1.4.x, if you park a call and then  
pick it up, you can't park it again.  At least not with the DTMF  
method.  I borrowed a patch from the 1.6 branch that fixes this and  
made it applicable to 1.4.20.1, well I borrowed part of it.  The  
entire patch let you configure who could park etc., I wanted both  
sides to always park so I just took the 2 or 3 lines that were needed  
for that.  If you are interested I can e-mail it to you directly.

Regards,
Daniel

> Thanks,
> Brent Davidson
>
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