Hi, I wonder if someone would be able to help,

We have a receptionist on 201 and the rest of a sales office on say 202-231, currently our hunt group starts at 201 and goes 202, 203 etc

We'd like it to ring 201 if the receptionist is free and if not then ring a distributed hunt group so the rest of the sales office get an even number of calls,

I've tried putting the hunt group as the overflow of 201 but outside lines get an engaged tone if she's on the phone or DND instead of the hunt group,

Obviously we can't nest hunt groups but ideally we'd have a sequential hunt group of 2001 with 2 members, 201 and hunt group 2002 how can I achieve this?

Cheers,

You can have the receptionist as the first member of the hunt group, then an extension list with the other phones as the next member. This will only work as linear, not distributed, if you always want the receptionist to ring first.

One trick is to include the receptionist in the extension list, then add the extension list as the hunt group member numerous times. That way, calls will always ring the receptionist first, but her phone will also ring if she becomes available.

FYI, never use the hunt group announcement or overflow destinations to ring other phones - only use recall. Obviously, calls won't recall until the hunt group recall timer expires.

Can I set the extension list to ring distributed within the linear hunt group?



I'm not entirely sure how this would work? I'm still not really clear how the extension list will be rung by the hunt group


Could I use extension 201's Overflow destination as the hunt group?

I've tried with hunt groups with other hunt groups as the recall stations but that hasn't worked

I've made some progress, so I've got hunt group 2004 with 1 station in - 201, and hunt group 2003 set as recall and overflow after 7 seconds with about 15 stations in,

that works as long as hunt group 2004 isn't flagged as an "ACD Hunt Group" if it's flagged true the outside call gets a busy tone?

However if 201 is on DND it doesn't work, the outside call instantly gets a busy tone and that's it

No, you can’t use overflow. A call answered by an overflow station will be pulled back to the original hunt group if a member becomes available before the recall timer expires. If you’re unsure of how overflow works, use F1 to read up.

An extension list causes all phones to ring at the same time.

You could have calls ring to a hunt group with only the receptionist as a member, then recall to a second hunt group, set as distributed. Flag the hunt group as camp-ons allowed and callers won’t receive a busy signal. However, calls won’t move to the second hunt group until the recall timer expires.

Thanks DND on, I was really close to what you've just said i just hadn't found the "camp-ons" allowed option

Why is there no way for it just to immediately skip the busy hunt group? it clearly knows it busy! lol

Would it be possible to do it from the receptionist's extension instead of from a hunt group with just 201 in it? It works with the standard "fwd - no answer/busy" but the users can so easily take that off and break it how do I trigger a system forwarding path i've assigned to that user?

Hunt group calls will remain in queue until the recall timer expires, then route to the recall destination.

Yes, you could create a forward path to send calls to a hunt group on a busy or DND condition. Incoming calls will have to route directly to the receptionist's phone.

how/where do i create that forward path? or maybe more specifically set the "on busy or DND" forward to path "1"

oh wow, never realised there were more options once you added a system forwarding path to a station!
Where do i set the timer for "no answer" for system forwarding? the Forward No Answer system timer specifically says it doesn't apply to system forwarding

Ok so that's worked a treat for a LINEAR hunt group, the call rings at 201 if its free, or goes straight to hunt group 2003, however if I enable ACD Hunt Group and set to one of the advanced distribution options such as "Longest Idle" the call never routes to the hunt group

After you set the hunt group to be ACD, did you log the phones into the hunt group?

ahh, we dont use the login accounts thing, its just got a load of stations in it, standard Distributed works ok for us if ACD can't work with stations,

we solved this, we set up a Forwarding Path from the receptionists phone in the station section to forward to a standard Distributed hunt group

It doesn't quite do everything we wanted like the advanced hunt group features or keep ringing the receptionist as well bit it works