atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Avaya - Lucent Telephones & Systems Auto Attendant vs. Hunt Group

I have all lines programmed to ring into Hunt Group 1 for my sales people, but would like to have Auto Attendant pick up a call if nobody in the Hunt Group answers after x rings.

The instructions tell me to assign lines to Hunt Group 7 in order to use Auto Attendant. Should I put the sales extensions in Hunt Group 7 as well?

Programming details that may be helpful:

I have 3 incoming lines, all in Pool 880.
Each line assigned to Hunt Group 1 in Group Call Distribution #206
x12, x14, and x15 assigned to Hunt Group 1
All extensions assigned to Pickup Group 1.
All extensions, except x10 of course, use pooled access to all 3 phone lines.

Thank you,
Bart

No. The ONLY extensions in hunt group 7 should be the VM ports.

You need to tell us what VM you have and what Partner system you have.

-Hal

Sorry about that, I have Partner 7 and the PCMCIA card (large).

Ports 78,79 would be your VM ports for hunt group 7.

I'm trying to retain the Hunt Group feature where it rings each extension 3 times until one of them answers. However, I also want to have Auto Attendant pick up after, say, 6 rings so callers aren't left with endlesss ringing.

Also, I want Auto Attendant to pick up if all extensions in the Hunt Group are busy or have Do Not Disturb activated. Today, for example, I have some sales people out sick and am down to 2 sales people covering 3 incoming lines. A caller on line 3 needs Auto Attendant when those 2 sales extensions are busy.

You are pretty limited with the PC mail, set your #506 day and night rings to how ever many rings you want until the AA answers in case no one gets to them.

I think, given that #506 only goes to 6 rings, that it will only get to the second hunt extension then the AA will pick up.

As Russ says you are limited on what you can get a PC mail to do and the Partner itself is not well suited for ACD.

What I would do is forget about the hunt group and assign your sales extensions to a calling group (71) instead. You have the AA pick up all calls then prompt the caller to press 5. Selector code 5 points to your calling group-71. Now all the phones ring at once. If there is no answer the call goes to X10 where someone can pick it up or it will go to the X10 mailbox.

-Hal

I can see where it would be easier to forget about the Hunt Group, but they really do work better this way. If their phone rings, they answer it - otherwise they ignore it.

If incoming lines are assigned to Hunt Group 1, is the AA even capable of answering it?

I left all lines as assigned, then set #506 to two rings for both day and night to test it, but AA would not answer an incoming call. Does this mean that Hunt Groups and AA cannot be combined as I'm trying to do it?

Thank you Russ & Hal, you have both been very helpful.

Bart

If incoming lines are assigned to Hunt Group 1, is the AA even capable of answering it?

No. They would also have to be assigned to hunt group 7 which is the AA hunt group.

Does this mean that Hunt Groups and AA cannot be combined as I'm trying to do it?

They can be combined but they work independently of each other. The AA will pick up according to the rings specified in #506 regardless of what hunt group 1 is doing at the time. So if you only have one or two extensions assigned to hunt group 1 with three rings each and have the AA pick up after six rings it may work but you have more extensions than that.

Now if you were to replace the Partner mail PC card with a Partner Messaging R7...

-Hal

Hal,

Assigning a line to HG7 unassignes it from HG1, so I lose the HG feature in order to get AA to pick up the call. And, as you explained, leaving that line in HG1 means AA will never pick up the call.

I'm leaning toward using AA for all incoming lines, with a greeting like "...If you know your party's extension, you may press it at any time. Otherwise, please hold for the first available representative."

They would then be sent into the HG. However, I haven't figured out how to get them back into the VMS if nobody in the HG answers that call.

Maybe I should also look into pricing for Partner Messaging R7! Would this allow me to have control over a no-answer situation in a Hunt Group?

Bart