[Asterisk-Users] Musiconhold and Parking crash

[Brad Bergman]

> I am not pressing #, am I supposed to press #.  Is that how asterisk
> does It by default, or is that just how the SNOM phones work?

Press # to transfer is an option in the Dial application; you can use the
t option to enable pressing # to blind transfer your call. You press
pound, the voice says "Transfer" and you dial the destination number. In
this case your caller would hear music on hold if you transfer them to
call parking or ringing if you transfer them to some extension. In my
experience the caller hears silence in the interlude after you hit # but
before you finish dialling the destination.

You can also do a more traditional flash-initiated transfer, where the
caller hears music as soon as you hit flash, and you get a dial tone to
dial & transfer (or park) the call.

> Do I need to alter my extensions.conf to make # go to musiconhold?

No. You need to modify extensions.conf if you want to enable # transfer,
though. Seems to me you also need musiconhold=default for the relevant
channels in zapata.conf.

> I can't get musiconhold to work using the hold button, 

Pressing the hold button on an analog phone doesn't put the call on hold 
as far as Asterisk is concerned, it just holds it on that telephone. So 
silence would be expected.

> I can imagine situations where I would favour placing a call On hold as
> opposed to using call parking, so I would like to get musiconhold to
> Work with the hold button.

I doubt that this can be accomplished. It might be interesting to have an
Asterisk application to hold a call in a more traditional way than call
parking and reconnect it as soon as the extension that held it is picked
back up. That way you could at least label a speed dial key as "hold".