Answering Main Number Inbound Calls Issue - Call Presence vs. Call Queue

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marcnj6181 asked Apr 15, '17 marcnj6181 answered Apr 16, '17

Answering Main Number Inbound Calls Issue - Call Presence vs. Call Queue

Here's the issue:

Our client wants to be able to have two people at the front desk (each with their own RingCentral extension - let's say ext. 103 and ext. 104) to be able to answer all inbound calls to the company's main number. However, our client also wants to be able to see when each of these people is on the phone so they know their status. And finally, the back-office staff (let's say ext. 101 and ext. 102) want to be able to pick up calls to the main inbound number sometimes as well (which I know can be accomplished with RingCentral's presence feature).

If we do a call queue situation, everything above works except that there's no call waiting for the front desk extensions, so if both front desk people are on the phone and a 3rd calls, the call just rings for 30 seconds and then goes to voicemail, and they want call waiting.

If we do a virtual extension, then call waiting works but I have to set up the presence on the back office phones as that virtual extension (to allow them to pick up those calls) and even if I also set up presence on those back office phones for the front office ext. 103 and ext. 104, it doesn't show those extensions as being busy when one of them answers an inbound call to this virtual extension - therefore the back office people have no idea who is on the phone and who is not in the front office.

RingCentral didn't have any solutions for this - anyone have any work-arounds or suggestions? The client is not happy they can't have all of this since their old phone system actually did this all (in a very archaic manner, but they were happy with it). Thanks!

Account Type: US
Related Case Number: ref:_00D80aRUX._50034vWYNr:ref
Detailed Description Of Problem: See above
Goal: See above
Previous Troubleshooting Steps Taken: See above
Software Version: N/A
If desk-phone related, have you rebooted phone? N/A
Number of Users and/or Digital Lines affected: Four

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Answer 1 · 2017-04-15T21:17:58Z

Chuck Fuscone answered Apr 15, '17

Hi Marc, how did you have your call flow when using the call queues? Simultaneous ring or fixed order?

Call queues are single threaded that is a fact so no ability to put people on hold to answer a call. My thought is if you are helping a customer why do you want to put that person on hold to grab a call only to put that on hold? With the call queues if both front office people are busy have the next call fall to an overflow queue and put the back office people in it. This way they only get calls when the front 2 are busy.

Or use a fixed order where the first 2 always get calls and then if they are busy the back 2 are in line to get the calls.

Why wont this work?

Explain

Thanks

Chuck
Certified RC Installer
Chuck@yoritguy.com

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Answer 2 · 2017-04-16T15:03:10Z

danno147 answered Apr 16, '17

I would not do the Call Queue in this case (it prevents call waiting). Set the main number to ring the front desk phones and then in Call Handling after xx seconds, have the call ring the virtual extension that would appear as presence keys of the other two phones. That way they would see the front desk presence and also have the ability to know/answer the main number.

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Answer 3 · 2017-04-16T15:28:42Z

marcnj6181 answered Apr 16, '17 danno147 commented Apr 17, '17

Won't work because unfortunately it's not what the client wants. It's a small office - 4 people total. Two attorney's in the back and two front desk/staff upfront. They only want the front desk staff to be answering the phones (except in the rare case they haven't changed over to after-hours voicemail and the front desk staff are gone, they want to be able to pick up the calls via presence pick-up). And they are OK with the front desk staff getting call waiting if both are on the phone and putting current call on hold to answer second call, etc. But with call queue they can't do this, and as mentioned with virtual extension they can do call waiting but back office can't see presence of the two staffers up front accurately.

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danno147 commented · Apr 16, 2017 at 03:14 PM

Step one - program main number to ring ext. 101. For this example let's say it rings for 20 seconds.
Step two - program ringing presence key on 102 for 101. This way they have the ability to answer calls to the main number ringing on 101.
Step three - in Call Handling of 101 create a ring group for 103 and 104 that starts to ring after the 20 seconds timer expires in step one.

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Answer 4 · 2020-07-28T14:19:29Z

marcnj6181 answered Jul 28, '20

Sorry - I'm not quite following how you're describing the set-up/configuration?

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Answer 5 · 2020-07-28T14:19:29Z

marcnj6181 answered Jul 28, '20

Hmm...I think you may have solved my problem! Step 3 is not necessary since they don't want it ringing in the back - just the ability to see the light blinking and do the call presence pick-up, but from what you're saying above we should get rid of the virtual extension entirely and just do main number calls to ext. 101 and have ext. 102 do the same thing as the back extensions - have it be able to pick up inbound calls with the call presence button, right? That might work, and the two phones/desks are right near each other - the only issue might be if ext. 101 is on the phone already, then there wouldn't be any audible ringing sound for ext. 102 to know that a new incoming call is coming in for them to answer (just the blinking red light on their phone). I know there is a setting for 'Ring my phone when any user I am monitoring rings", but the downside to that is that ext. 102 monitors the back office extensions also, so anytime any of those extensions rings, ext. 102 would ring erroneously also.

I guess the alternative to that would be to also do a roll-over with call handling, so that ext. 101 maybe has 15 seconds to answer, and then ext. 102 has 15-20 seconds to answer, and then it goes to voicemail, but would I run into the same issue here where if ext. 102 answers after it rolls over to ext. 102, the call presence lights in the back office phones wouldn't correctly show ext. 102 on the phone?

Is there anything we can do with the RingCentral app to get it to indicate just to ext. 102 (on the app/computer) that inbound calls are ringing on ext. 101?

Thanks for your help - definitely making a lot of progress here - wish this was easier to set-up, but thanks so much!

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