Allow grouping of extensions into 'pick-up groups' to stop a user picking up a call they don't want.
We configure a speed-dial key with the *20* needed for call pick-up [we use the number 9 key on SPA942 phones]. But if there is some other phone ringing in the building, and a person uses this speed-dial pick-up to get at a call ringing in their department - they pick up the call that's ringing somewhere else. Most PBX's will allow you to allocate a 'pick-up group number' to each extension. This means that extensions allocated to group 2 using *20* will only pick up ringing calls on other pick-up group 2 extensions. If you want to pick up calls on extensions outside the group, you should still be able to use the extension number after the *20* as you do now.
Not having this feature causes us real problems with larger installs - which is what we want more of!
Comments (4)
you have ring groups for it and BLF for PickUps, dislike from me
This is the most requested featured we are asked for and is one of the simplest to implement and is missing from 3CX (and is present in Avaya, Mitel, Asterisk, PBXnSIP and Cisco systems). The basic functionality is already present in 3CX as system wide pickup, but in its current form it has major limitations.
I envisage this feature taking the form of an additional field when setting up a extension and assigning them a pickup group number. When an end user then dials the pickup code + the pickup group number, this would answer any ringing call on a group members phone, regardless of whether it came through a ring group or DDI number.
EG: Ext 2004 and Ext 2007 are located on the same office floor and are members of pickup group 4, the feature code to pickup calls placed to pickup group 4 is *204*
Call comes in to ext 2004's DDI and ext 2007 can dial *204* and answer the call without having to know which ext is ringing, without having to guess if it came in as part of a ring group or via a DDI and also more importantly without the risk of picking up a call that's ringing on another phone in another dept/floor/office (which he would if he used *20*)
Users would only be a member of one pickup group.
Avaya describe this feature as:
“A pickup group is a list of phones where each member of the group can answer another member's calls. For example, if you want everyone on one floor of an office to be able to answer calls to any extension on that floor (in case someone is away from their desk), create a pickup group that contains all of the floors extensions. Members of a pickup group should be located in the same area so that they can hear ringing at the other extensions in the group. Note that each extension may belong to only one pickup group.”
My Explanation
The end user would simply dial a feature code (which could be programmed as a speed dial) to pickup any ringing phone on their floor. This differs from using *20* + ring group as the end user doesn’t need to know/lookup or think about the ring group code (as the other extensions on their floor may not even be in the same ring group) - they just dial a single code to pickup a ringing phone near them.
EG - Floor One in an open plan office has Accounts and Sales which each have their own ring group (100-Sales and 200-Accounts).
After hours people in Accounts wish to pickup calls ringing in sales, but from their location they cannot determine if the phone ringing across the other side of the office is a sales or accounts phone. In this scenario with the existing 3CX functionality, they would have to lookup the ring group number for Sales and then dial *20*+100 to answer the call, but it may not be a sales call and they would then have to look up the Accounts ring group number and redial *20*+200 to answer the call. This is a lot of effort on the users part to answer a call that isn't even for them - so they wont use it.
The other option the user has would be to dial *20* and dial in order to pickup the ringing call - but this carries a risk (in a large company) of the user picking up a call that came into the system before the call they are trying to answer, and is ringing in a different part of the building - result = end user picks up a call they dont know how to deal with or dont wish to deal with.
The solution is a pickup group - if all sales and accounts phones are in a single pickup group due to their physical proximity to one another, the after hours accounts user only has to dial the relevant feature code plus the pickup group number to pickup any call ringing on their floor - this is how a lot of systems do it (Mitel, Avaya, Asterisk, Cisco) and it should be possible in 3CX.
3CX assistant does not solve the issue either as this relies on it being used in every install, or a logged on PC being located next to every phone. This is rarely the case in our installations.
This is certainly one common feature with a 'traditional PBX' that 3CX does not have, and that my users will miss once our install of 3CX v9 is live.
You will be able to do call pick up per extension group in 10