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--- RE: Using digital receptionist to get to conferences (http://www1.pbxes.com/forum/threadid.php?threadid=1219157891)

Using digital receptionist to get to conferences

Hi
I may be missing the obvious here but is there a way of getting the digital receptionist to route callers to a conference. I can see how callers can enter an extension number which digital receptionist then forwards to the extension. But there doesnt seem to be any way to send to a conference room.

Thanks
Mike

RE: Using digital receptionist to get to conferences

Sure there is.

Create a Classic extension and name it Conference. In its' PSTN_Number field enter 8xxx where xxx is the extension number of any of your 3-digit extensions, or 8xxxx in case of 4-digit extensions.

Then direct the Digital Receptionist to the newly created extension and your callers will end up in the conference room.

RE: Using digital receptionist to get to conferences

Thanks - that works fine except for one thing

The conference doesn't seem to want to stop despite the fact that everybody has left. If you call back in, it tells you that you are the only person in the conference but when you hang up again, the conference still doesn't stop.

How do you stop it? Does it go on for ever using up our minutes allowance?


Well - it's finally stopped after about 10 minutes - all on its own What is going on? Is there a bug?

Thanks

RE: State of conference rooms

As far as I know, and I am not certain, every extension has its' own conference room which is always available. If no one is in the room it is on StandBy mode.

I don't think it consumes any traffic on StandBy mode, if it has no participants. So when you join a conference room and you are alone, you get that message along with the On Hold music.

I am not sure if the streaming of the On Hold music counts on your traffic or minute allowance.

RE: Using digital receptionist to get to conferences

I was just concerned because if you look at the status screen you see the minutes ticking away even though nobody is in the conference. But if as you say it doesn't count towards your minute allowance then I don't care if it shows as having one participant in error or not

Thanks for your help.

Clarification for the use of Conference Rooms in Traffic Totals

I have now verified the information regarding the use of Conference Rooms, whether their use counts against the monthly traffic totals, and it does.

In addition when there is only one participant in the room, listening to the streaming of the On Hold music while they wait for others to join, it also counts against the monthly traffic totals.

Regarding the issue you brought up, that at the end of a conference call a single user remains in the room, please verify if it corresponds to the CDRs in the Call Monitor.

If the additional time is being accounted in the CDR for that particular call from the extension, please report it here so we can look into the issue.

RE: Using digital receptionist to get to conferences

Just to clarify - my problem was that once ALL users had left conference room it still showed on the status display as having one participant and the time continued to count. If somebody calls back in to the conference however, they are told that they are the only person in the conference. So - there is a problem somewhere - the conference does not seem to recognise when everybody has left!

RE: Using digital receptionist to get to conferences

As the original poster to this thread, we want to use the digital receptionist to have outside parties join a conference. Trouble is that we can only get 1 outside person dial an extension that is dialing an 8xxx conference code. An additional person dialing the same extension can not join the same conference.

A workaround would be to have each caller use a separate extension, but that is more confusing than helpful.

What we tried is to have the digital receptionist define a ring group that dials multiple extensions, all pointing to the same conference. This should work if one of them were "busy", but doesn't, no matter whehter we select ringall, hunt or memoryhunt.

We are looking for a solution to easily have a couple of outside people join a conference call. Any assistance is appreciated.

RE: Using digital receptionist to get to conferences

Check your call waiting setting in extension.

RE: Using digital receptionist to get to conferences

This works - thank you. To summarize:
* define X as a classic extension that dials a conference room. To have a classic extension dial a conference room Y, enter 8Y into the PSTN_Number field. Extension X has to have Call Waiting enabled by checking the box.
As a background, there are as many conference rooms as extensions. If there is an extension Y=100, the associated conference room is 8100.

* to join a conference using the digital receptionist, have the menu selection (let's call it Z) dial extension X that was defined above.

There is no need to use individual extensions for different external callers.

In the above example, internal callers use X to join the conference; external callers use Z at the digital receptionist (or, alternatively, are transferred by an internal caller)

Hint: if you want to have the same dial-in for both internal and external callers, have 8Y = Z

RE: Using digital receptionist to get to conferences

I think I found an alternative, correct me if I am wrong.

Instead of using a classical extension to get into the conference call, one can also use a Ring Group with a single conference room as destination followed by a #.

Eg.

Ring group 4:
8xxx#

Where 8xxx is the conference room.

This way you save (the hassle) of setting up/ wasting an extension if you have a limited number of them.

RE: Using digital receptionist to get to conferences

Zitat:

Originally posted by rtmont I think I found an alternative, correct me if I am wrong. Instead of using a classical extension to get into the conference call, one can also use a Ring Group with a single conference room as destination followed by a #. Eg. Ring group 4: 8xxx# Where 8xxx is the conference room. This way you save (the hassle) of setting up/ wasting an extension if you have a limited number of them.

This indeed seems to work. Good tip.

About the call timer continuing after the last caller left the conference room, that is still a fact.
Just set up a conference call with 3 internal extensions. When the first one hung up, the status screen showed 2 participants, going to 1 participant after the second extension hung up, but staying at 1 participant even after the last participant (who was hearing MOH) hung op.
The extensions all show green in the status screen.
In the call monitor everything seems okay, since I had a short conference call and the last entry was only a bit longer than 1 minute while the conference room showed 1 participant left for about 10 more minutes (estimate).