sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Need your opinions

I have a customer that currently uses Centrex and they want to eventually get rid of the Centrex lines. They have dedicated numbers to each department, some have two numbers others one. They have a bid from another vendor on a Vodavi STS, here is the problem I see. They don’t want all lines appearing on each phone they still want their dedicated number as they are listed, but they want to be able to internally transfer, in the programming manual it shows you can program a loop key to pick up lines other than your own so you can do an internal transfer, the problem I see is if the department has only one line than that internal transfer is going to tie up their line for outgoing and incoming until the party transferred to gets done. They do not want to use the Centrex to transfer as they want to get rid of the Centrex lines. Now 2 questions for the gurus. I don’t think if they get rid of the Centrex they can keep the same numbers, aren’t certain numbers assigned for Centrex only? The second question, I can’t think of any system that would not tie up the transferees line on an internal transfer if they want to keep this dedicated line to each department thing. I know this is long, couldn’t think of anyway to shorten it and get the point a crossed. All comments and opinions welcome.
Thanks,
Bill

A customer can covert their Centrex #'s toregular 1FB's or DID's. You might want to verify that they don't have a contract on the Centrex or there may be additional charges

Thank you, I wasn't aware of that. Yes they do have a contract, but it's about up.
Bill

I think you would need to be able to do trunk to trunk transfer, then you send a call from your line to someone else and leave your line free for another call. I don't know if the Vodavi will do that. Being able to transfer like that is why people buy centrex in the first place. If the system has an unsupervised conference feature you could conference the person to whoever then drop out of the conversation. That's all I can think of.
mark

If these are analog lines, wouldn't a trunk to trunk transfer still tie up their line?

A PRI w/ DID could work. And their phone numbers can probably be ported in as DID's.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by 5years&counting:
[B]If these are analog lines, wouldn't a trunk to trunk transfer still tie up their line?

I understand Trunk to trunk as the same as centrex does, when you hang up to complete the transfer your line is idle. But I have been wrong before mark

Why not dump them into AA and let it or the recpt do the transfer/ station to station?

Had a similar situation at a country club ---this reduced the overall numbers, and kept the manpower down as they had no full time receptionist.

The way I see it, you would be tying up two lines in the system. Even on a PRI you would be using 2 B-channels for the conference. I'm not sure there's any way around it.

I'll have to look in the manual to see if trunk to trunk is an option. Didn't think about the 3way so will check that also as a possibility. Here ya on the AA but they are hung up on the dedicated lines, which would be fine if they had plenty. Thanks for the input and ideas keep them coming.
Bill

Just use T1 with 2 way DID, convert existing dedicated numbers to DID, activate enough channels to handle traffic.