I have a viking call announce unit installed at a Facility that locks their doors throughout the day for various reasons, and wanted a door bell of sorts to call certian stations when visitors arrived. I have it installed on a CO8 card in the switch and it rings multiple stations throughout the building when activated. Works great, however, intermittently when someone in the group is on the phone, the call is transferred to voicemail, and the person at the door gets a vm recording, instead of a live person. When no one is on the phones it works perfectly. What options do I have to get around this. Loud ringing bell is one, but it will not cover all the departments that get this call. Any ideas?

Are you using direct ring or a hunt group?

Using Direct Ring, and Night Ring.

Try setting up a hunt group for those extensions and do not set forwarding to vmail in that group. Chances are its hitting a extension and is following its call foward ring no-answer or Foward on busy.

Also set the group to ring all.

I will try that, thank you. I tried it using an existing hunt group already but it had the forwarding set up on it, so I will try this.
Thanks for the quick reply.

No problem....Let us know how you make out. :thumb:

Great Idea, thanks it is working. Will have to monitor it for a few days, but I just created a new hunt group and set up the ringing assignments. This site uses all the enhanced ringing options day and night so I had to set all those up as well. So far so good. I over looked the option to use the hunt groups since this was just a CO line. All the other incoming lines are DID's on a PRI set up.

Thanks again,

Glad it worked out :thumb:

There's usually only certain instances that will cause a line to follow a station's forwarding. If I remember right, one has to do with a line being set as the Prime for only one station (someone please correct me if I'm wrong on this one). Another has to do with a station's forwarding being set to Forward All.

The only downside to using the Hunt Group is that it will not present the call to a busy station. If all stations are busy, you won't know someone is at the door. One way around this, as long as you keep it in mind when programming, is to be sure to program one or more "common area" phones, to help increase the odds of there being an idle phone at all times, so you will hear the ringing.

Justin

A busy extension will recieve a second call if it has a group intercom to accept it.

[Edited to move response outside of quoted/bold post reference, to make the response a little easier to see. Justin]

I don't believe that is correct. When using STATION HUNT GROUPS, I don't believe you will receive a call from the hunt group at your station if you are on the phone. There is a setting to allow you to receive a call if you've placed a call on hold or park (those instances can be considered as idle, with this specific setting).

Justin

I think we have a cross between two different settings here and in essence you are both correct in each setting. When using group intercoms, you can take a second call while on the phone if you have multiple group intercom numbers assigned at the station, but if you are assigned to a hunt group, the call will route past you if you are in a busy condition and hunt to other availble stations. Group intercoms will follow the forwarding settings from the assigned ringing station for the lines set to ring there, and the hunt groups should follow the attributes set up in the Station Hunting program for overflow, vm, etc.

Thank you guys for all your input.