PBXnSIP Call Flow Requirements

[pcunite]

What I need to leave a hosted PBX company. I must have this exact call flow.

 

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Auto Attendant:

- Business Hours and After Hours awareness.

- When PBX answers call, customizable sound file ("press 1 for sales...")

- If no press after X seconds go to extension or hunt group.

- AFTER the above events have occurred, customizable play sound or NO sound.

- Send caller to hunt group or extension.

 

Hunt Group (FollowMe/FindMe):

- Dial internal extension (100) for X seconds then external (555-5555), etc..

- Having the external number listed here instead of a dummy extension is easier to manage complex routing.

- If a hunt entry does answer, then a per hunt entry customizable "Press 1 to accept" or play sound file.

- At all times when dialing different numbers/extensions play music on hold with no interruptions unless desired.

- If no hunt entries have answered send to Voicemail with customizable sound "all reps are busy, please leave a message".

 

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The above requirements will keep a caller in the PBX and won't update them with events that are unimportant to them. This call flow is also geared/designed to present a company, not a person or even a group of people. The PBX only plays three sounds... hello, music, human, or I'm sorry.

 

To summarize

The caller hears an auto attendant, they press a button or wait, they hear music, then they hear a human voice or go to voicemail.

 

None of the windows compatible PBX's offer this exact set of capabilities. Until they do I am stuck with RingCentral or an Asterisk solution. I will be forced to make a decision soon and that decision will be to stay with RingCentral another year. I hope to check back on the status of PBXnSIP and find it a purchasable product. Well wishes to the developers and keep up the good effort.

[Vodia PBX]

- If a hunt entry does answer, then a per hunt entry customizable "Press 1 to accept" or play sound file.

 

I don't get that part. You mean that the phone should ring, then then the user picks up he should hear an IVR asking him to press 1?

 

The other parts seem to be clear and no big problem (maybe just get a demo code and try it out).

[pcunite]

I don't get that part. You mean that the phone should ring, then then the user picks up he should hear an IVR asking him to press 1?

 

Correct. The reason for this request is that some phone numbers in the hunt are dedicated offices, they know a customer is calling. Other numbers are personal cell phones, and the user's don't know if a customer or the wife is the one calling. This needs to be customizable per hunt entry because of this.

[Vodia PBX]

Correct. The reason for this request is that some phone numbers in the hunt are dedicated offices, they know a customer is calling. Other numbers are personal cell phones, and the user's don't know if a customer or the wife is the one calling. This needs to be customizable per hunt entry because of this.

 

Well for the cell phone forking the "1" is there. But for desktop phones the PBX offers that feature only if someone calls the extension directly through the auto attendant, not through a group (which would be kind of difficult anyway). But desktop phones always display the right caller ID as the call does not get redirected.

 

Make sure you use the version 4 for this. There the cell phone forking is available for hunt and agent groups (ACD).

[pcunite]

Well for the cell phone forking the "1" is there. But for desktop phones the PBX offers that feature only if someone calls the extension directly through the auto attendant, not through a group (which would be kind of difficult anyway). But desktop phones always display the right caller ID as the call does not get redirected.

 

Thank you for helping nail this description down. I should mention that an extension (it does not matter if local or remote PBX) does NOT need the "press 1 to answer" feature. A PBX extension user knows what is going on. Only external numbers, that is to say numbers not controled by this PBX. Basically just calling a regular home/office line and cell phones need the "press 1" option. My apologies for that.

 

I will try version 4, two days ago I was using 4 and it did not have constant uninterrupted music after the first auto attendant which is a deal breaker as well. I will try again as I might have missed a setting. Just to recap, the caller should only hear three sound files, "Hello, music, sorry everyone is busy leave a message". All customizable of course.

[Vodia PBX]

I was using 4 and it did not have constant uninterrupted music after the first auto attendant which is a deal breaker as well.

 

Oh because you heared ringback in the hunt group?

[pcunite]

Oh because you heared ringback in the hunt group?

 

Yes, I just edited my post, please re-read it. But yeah, ringing I think it was. I will test again tomorrow.

[Vodia PBX]

Yes, I just edited my post, please re-read it. But yeah, ringing I think it was. I will test again tomorrow.

 

The other alternative would be to use a agent group instead of a hunt group, because there you can play MoH while the callers are waiting; and you have more control about the audio playback part and when the call is considered "connected".

[pcunite]

Testing 4.0.1.3452 (Win32) today. We used:

* 1 VoIP trunk

* 1 Auto Attendant

* 2 service flags (during and after hours)

* 1 Hunt Group (extension 1000 and 555-5555)

* 1 extension (1000)

 

Everything on our list worked with the following exceptions:

* There was no music on hold, only ringing

* An agent group was not tested as suggested. Is this not priced higher than the PRO version and not on the sipJack?

* The final stage of the Hunt Group, extension 1000, played a prompt before our customized greeting. Does not seem to be an option to only play our sound file only.

 

BUGS:

* We were able to get pbxctrl.exe to enter an endless loop based on attempting to use our current browser session after a restart of the service. That machines IP address now can never connect as pbxctrl.exe will enter an endless loop.

* Other instabilities with this version made it so we could not properly test various handling of calls, often times a busy signal was generated for the caller. A restart of the services corrects this until it happens again.

 

The bugs may be the result of testing inside Virtual PC 2007 using Windows XP SP3.

[Vodia PBX]

Everything on our list worked with the following exceptions:

* There was no music on hold, only ringing

* An agent group was not tested as suggested. Is this not priced higher than the PRO version and not on the sipJack?

* The final stage of the Hunt Group, extension 1000, played a prompt before our customized greeting. Does not seem to be an option to only play our sound file only.

 

Ehh... Not sure about the licenses. The SipJack technically can do it, and AFAIK you can run any kind of license there. In any case the "3 minute key" ha sall options in it, so can try anything out.

 

If you just want to play a prompt consider using a IVR node. That is easier than trying to get an auto attendant quiet.

 

* We were able to get pbxctrl.exe to enter an endless loop based on attempting to use our current browser session after a restart of the service. That machines IP address now can never connect as pbxctrl.exe will enter an endless loop.

* Other instabilities with this version made it so we could not properly test various handling of calls, often times a busy signal was generated for the caller. A restart of the services corrects this until it happens again.

 

Yea, we were trying to improve the startup behavior. When you have a lot of CDR and rates, the startup would take so long that the service manager would believe the service did not make it and kills the service. Hopefully now that problem is fixed.

 

The PBX sends busy only if the system is overloaded. That might be a problem if the virtual machine does not get enough CPU horsepower. Anyway for testing the VM might be okay.