atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Nortel Telephones & Systems "The person you are calling is not available..."???

System is MICS with CallPilot 150 & T1 w/PRI.

I'm attempting to program the front desk & hostess phones of a restaurant to ring like this:

CCR answers, caller presses "2" for reservations, call goes to hostess (ext. 236). If hostess is busy, or no answer, call forwards to 221.

221 is front desk phone with one ringing (Target) line (no lines assigned to 236). 221 is assigned to mailbox 100 (Gen Delivery mailbox). If, after Call Forward No Answer or Call Forward Busy, call forwards to front desk (221) and is not answered there, call should go to Gen Delivery mailbox.

HOWEVER, here's what's actually happening:

Caller presses "2", 236 rings, Call Forward No Answer or Call Forward Busy kicks in and forwards to 221. THEN (after only two rings on 221) caller hears "The person you are calling is not available" and the call is dumped back into the CCR.


???

I tried every combination possible... DRT to prime (Y/N); de-selecting call forward to VM port on 221; changing ext. 221 in Gen Delivery mailbox to 100; changing number of rings @ 236 & 221, etc.

I'm obviously missing something, but what? Any suggestions are appreciated.

D. Ocean
Miami, FLA

Hi Danny,

The call is not forwarding to mail. It is ringing back to the AA after the transfer timer expires (not DRT). Try bumping that up another ring or two.

Good Luck!

Yeah, I was thinking about that, but didn't really experiment.

But, if I disable or modify the rings, what happens to the other phones on the system? IIRC, the "transfer callback" feature is system-wide no? There are about 30 more phones with voicemail in the business office & hotel rooms.

Yes, it is a system-wide timer. You may need to do some balancing of the settings, and possibly adjust the forwarding on some of the other sets. If all transfered calls are expected to roll to mail after a no answer, you will be fine disabling the feature. It's the phones that are NOT supposed to forward to mail that will be adversely affected by this change.

You are fighting a design issue with call forwarding. This is not a timing issue.

Here is your scenerio.
AA answers > call directed to 236 > 236 is CFNA to 221 > 221 CFNA/CFB to VM.

Your call will never go to VM of 221 because call forwarding has tagged this call as originating from 236. When it is returned to voice mail it will attempt to access the mailbox for 236 not the one specified for 221. My guess is that because 236 has no mailbox, you end up back in the AA.

This is not a flaw but purposely designed this way.

You can bypass all CF issues if you use hunt groups for this application.

The issue here isn't that the calls are ending up in the WRONG mailbox. The calls aren't getting to a mailbox at all. The calls don't have a chance to follow x221's forwarding because "transfer callback" is pulling the call back to the AA, before 221 rings enough times to forward.

The caller is recalling to the AA after the "transfer callback" timer expires. It HAS to be a callback, because the message the caller is getting tells us so. If the call was following x221's forwarding to mail, the caller would get the mailbox for x236 (if one were built). If there isn't a mailbox for x236, the GD mailbox would be offered (which is the desired action).

The call needs to forward to mail BEFORE the total number of rings at x236 and x221 (combined) meets the transfer callback setting. So, if x236 forwards to x221 after 3 rings, and x221 forwards to mail after 3 rings, you have 6 rings total. Your transfer callback setting would need to be MORE than 6 rings (or disabled).

You can get around Forwarding with Hunt Groups, but you can't get around system timing parameters.

You could be right Marty, explanation is very plausable.

However for HG's if you assign the lines to the group they will ignore transfer call back and DRT timers.

Make sure M.B. is set to blind transfer.CFA BNA to 221.
build mailbox 236 but don't intialize it mailboxes that are not intialized can't take messages and it will dump by default into general delivery M.B. 100.The following is copied straight from the installation manual
"A Subscriber mailbox must be initialized by the mailbox owner before it can receive voice
messages. Until a mailbox is initialized, it cannot receive voice messages, it does not appear in the
Company Directory, and any calls that are directed to it are rerouted to the General Delivery mailbox"

Well...I tried creating a MB @ 236 but didn't initialize...got the same message.

So, what I did was create/initialize a MB @ 236, then made set 233 (on the front desk next to 221) an "alternate ext" in the CP of 236. So, now 236 rings three times, then 221 rings three times, then caller ends up in 236 MB. If no-one @ 236's station, front desk sees message for you on 233.

It works and client is happy.

Thanks all,

D. Ocean
Miami, FLA