Having call forward external issues on 3 systems CIX40 and CIX100 all with 5.2 software and multiple models of handsets.

The issue: it just won't call forward external on all DP stations. COS has Tandem trunks checked.

A lot of employees are trying to have their stations ring their cell phone for work-at-home scenarios.

Losing my mind because it seems so simple but has not worked well at all.

All stations have a system call forward to voicemail activated. When call forward to external number is entered, caller hears it ring and then it goes back to transfer station or V/M - wherever it was transferred from.

any ideas on what I may have missed?

Are the calls hitting an AA first or ringing right to the station from a DID?

The Forward to External number problem is on multiple systems. Auto Attendant transfer to station and a receptionist, main answering position, direct transfer to station. It seems like a simple feature but just doesn’t perform the operation.
Very frustrating issue on a feature I never really used before. Now it’s the most requested and I can’t find why it’s not working.

depending on how many people are using it, and how everything is set up... consider this.
you're getting a call, tying up a trunk, that person interacts with the AA, etc. they're still only tying up 1 trunk. now the system tries to forward them off premises. is there an available trunk to make the outbound call? (maybe) can the AA or VM system actually pick up an outbound trunk (maybe, toll fraud.... ) even if they have DID numbers that customers dial into and it skips your local AA entirely, it STILL has to have an open line to make the call out to the cell phone. and depending on your service setup, may require that both trunks sit there busy the entire time the call is in session (I know on the all-analog system I work with that's the nature of the beast)

Bottom line, it may be trying, but not be able to tell you "hey, I can't transfer this call because I don't have a trunk to transfer it TO"
and I could be totally wrong.

Make sure tandem CO connection, trunk access allowed, and through dialing checked in the COS of the VM ports. I have only ever used this on a PRI and SIP trunks where all calls were either going through the AA and then being xferred to the station that was set to call forward external. I have also gotten it to work for DID calls. I have not gotten it to work with analog trunks, but it's a bad idea to use analog trunks to call forward external.

If you are going to do this for more than a user or two, make sure that you have enough available trunks on the system as every call will now take two trunks.

Thanks,
Daniel

If the call comes from AA to a station and the station has CF-ALL activated, you must have a few pauses in the extension field of the voicemail box and then an "H" on the end to hangup (assuming the default that the VM is not set to do this). On analog POTS trunks a call must completely setup before the voicemail disconnects on Toshiba systems.

PRI, and presumably SIP, don't have this requirement so it can be frustrating to see it work flawlessly on those type of trunks and not POTS.

We have been urging our customers to use the service provider's Call Forwarding when possible for this reason, among many others. We get pushback but we stand our ground and they eventually get it done. Our customer base is large enough that it is not worth the effort to try and troubleshoot all the requests when we know the service provider can do this better than the PBX where POTS trunks are involved.