Thanks so much for all the feedback. I have had this issue with other VoIP providers with hunting. Its as if they just don't understand what I am talking about.

OBT: I understand we are using VoIP with an analog system. We have ATA's for each of the lines that plugin to the analog system. I wish they made a expansion unit which supported SIP on this system but I think its just too old? The reason why we put this system in is because we were told they are rock solid and we have phones in 20 classes for communication with the office so to replace all those handsets and the pbx would probably be out of our budget for now. If we did this I would probably just get SIP phones and have hosted phones. We also use our phone system as an intercom system which for emergencies and I don't want to have to rely on the internet for the emergency broadcast PA to work. I know we could look at Asterisk but I am trying to avoid that.

Carl: The last provider I tried to set this up with (callcentric voip provider) basically said the only way to call hunt in the way you are describing is through an unsupported method, they went on to show me how to setup the primary phone line to ring and if busy it would forward the call to an additional line and if it was not answered voicemail would pick up. So instead of a true call hunt roll over it was basically call forwarding if busy on the first three lines and the last was voicemail if busy and voicemail if no answer. This does not seem ideal either. From my experience with ANALOG PBX's most of them want call hunt for this type of scenario.

hbiss: we are not currently using an auto attendant because the office wants a live person to pick up the phone any time it rings so just 8 office phones ring and the other phones in the classes do not.


The other issue I am having is with outgoing calls. I want to setup each extension to essentially be bound to that phone line (ATA FXO technically). So outgoing calls, I would have to have a separate TRG for each extension with 1 CO on each I guess? For example EXT101 would be on TRG1 which would have CO1 in it. The issue this presents is that then people can not do conference calling and such I guess? That seems silly.

I could potentially replace just the Office phones with SIP phones and then somehow connect into the existing PBX for all the classroom phones but I can't really think of a good way to do that. The classroom phones could just dial out and it would ring all the extensions in the office but for the office to call the intercom function or classroom phones, I have no idea how that would work. Is there a way to dial into the PBX from an outside line and tap into the intercom function? Oh one idea is to use one of the analog Jacks to tap into the intercom system. Use an ATA connected to an analog jack and from the SIP office phones they could reach the ATA and then dial 33* to page the whole school? At least this way we could budget and work towards replacing equipment in phases (first the office phones, then later all the classroom phones)

-Jemmyn
[Panasonic KX-TD1232]