sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems ESI Telephones & Systems Trunk group assignment & dialing out

Just curious as to how others here are using trunk group assignments.

It has been my experience that when trunks are assigned to the various groups such as "9", "8", or "7" and outside dialtone access remains disabled, there are no problems in selecting specific trunks by dialing the appropriate group number.

The problem that I'm encountering is when outside dialtone is enabled and a trunk group access code is dialed, either deliberately or by mistake, no dialtone is returned. However, if you press a line button or go off hook you receive dialtone.

That scenario also brings up another problem where going off hook selects the last line in the system regardless of its group. For example, some customers like to leave a "backdoor" line available for employees to call in on. That way, in most cases, an incoming call on that line will most likely not be from a customer. This works well for after hour operations or when regular call volume is at its peak. Even if the trunks are in different groups the system will select the last line thereby defeating the "backdoor" approach.

This also applies when customers have several numbers in hunting, but would like to avoid using the last number in the C.O. hunt group and giving out their "backdoor" number via Caller-ID.

I do know that on Avaya systems you can program Auto line selection, where you choose exactly what order you'd like to select the lines or intercom. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks in advance to those who post a reply.

Set the line into group "0" for incoming only.

Turn off the Centrex dial access code in function 2. This will cause you to automatically dial a digit and when you have auto line pref turned on atthe station, it will appear that you do not have dial tone. Have the user dial 6 more digits and see if the call go through.

This is a problem i have run into also. Customers like to put the fax machine on the system to be able to use in to dial out when the other lines are busy. Can not use the outside dial tone feature because it would always grab the fax line. I have suggested to tech support to make it where you can designate a line group for preferred outside dial tone.
On their resellers website at the top their is a "email us your suggestions for product enhancement link." I am told the more requests they receive for a enhancement the more likely it is taken into consideration.

peace,

doug

I have also made this suggestion in the past. Keep it up. ESI will eventually see the importance in this and add it to the feature set.

I usually just assing fax lines as a private line to the associated fax ext. In other cases, I would just assing the line to be incomming only.

When outside DT is turned on at an ext. and you want to select a particular line group, hit transfer, then the associated trunk group. This kinda defeats the purpose but at least you still can select a certain trunk group.

Just for kicks, I will voice my opinion to ESI as well.

another thing about it is redial on CID from voicemail it grabs the last line, so if you have a doorphone, talkback paging, anything that takes a CO you have to put them on line 1 and move all the CO down. pretty funky.

Martin Wolfe
Telisys.net

I have also sent ESI an email about this.