asterisk users - Jan 2005 - Polycom IP500 - problems with multiple simultaneous calls

Hi All -

I've got a load of Polycom phones, and for the most part, I think 
they're great, but one thing that is bugging the heck out of me (and my 
users) is the "on-hold" feature.  When you're on a call, and
another
one comes in, it doesn't ring the second line appearance on the phone, 
even though I have it registered separately, and I've tried to make my 
dialplan go to the second appearance/registration.  Instead, the second 
call rings on the first line, and allows you to put the first call on 
hold, and take the second call.  To do so, though, you have to press 
the little down arrow and then press "Answer".  When the third call 
comes in, it will ring the 2nd line.  I find this to be non-intuitive, 
but I can get used to it.  My receptionists, however, are finding it 
REALLY painful.  I'd just like to make the first call go to line 
appearance 1, the second simultaneous call to go to line appearance 2, 
etc.

Maybe somebody figured out a neat dialplan thing to get this done.  My 
config that doesn't do what I want looks like this:

; The first line appearance is registered to 18, the second to 1802, 
and the third to 1803
exten => 18,1,Dial(SIP/18,20)
exten => 18,2,Voicemail(u18)
exten => 18,102,Goto(1802,1)

exten => 1802,1,Dial(SIP/1802,20)
exten => 1802,2,Voicemail(b18)
exten => 1802,102,Goto(1803,1)

exten => 1803,1,Dial(SIP/1803,20)
exten => 1803,2,Voicemail(b18)
exten => 1803,102,Voicemail(b18)
exten => 1803,103,Hangup

I guess the phone just doesn't register as busy when there is only one 
call on a line.  It has to have two calls on a line appearance to 
register as busy.  Has anyone figured out how to disable this hold 
feature and just have the second call go to the second line, the third 
call to the third line, etc?

Thanks,
Noah Miller

> I have these very phones and took me a while to figure this out myself.
> The phone considers each line registration to be a line with a second
> line.  So, call line while someone is on a call and another instance
> will appear below.   That means you only need one registered instance
> for the phones to get two incoming calls.  If however you want to have 
> a
> second registered extension rung if the first is busy, you have to
> configure that in Asterisk and the phone so that it moves to the next
> Dial command on a busy from the phone.  However, to get a busy from the
> phone, you have to configure the phone not to have the second ringing
> instance for the single registration.
>
> Confused?  I was...  So...  Your phone display looks some6thing like
> this...
>
> LINE 1>
> LINE 2>
> BLAH >
>
> In order to make line 1 toll into line 2, you need to make the phone 
> SIP
> back that it is busy when Line 1 is engaged.  Default out of the box is
> to show the incoming call on line below the current call on line one.
Hi Wiley -

Thanks for the research!  I've tried out a couple of the "divert" 
settings, but haven't yet found one that'll get the IP500's to send
a
busy message when only one call is active on a line.  I'll keep trying, 
and I'll let you know if I come up with anything.  I thought I should 
let you know, too, that another gentleman showed me a tricky way to 
accomplish the same end result by using a number of different contexts 
on the external lines, and then some fancy settings in the dialplan.  
I'm not sure I understand his configs yet, but he got it to work.  If 
you want those config files, just let me know.

Thanks Again,
Noah

Wed, 5 Jan 2005 19:51:05 -0500 Noah Miller wrote:
> Hi All -
> 
> I've got a load of Polycom phones, and for the most part, I think 
> they're great, but one thing that is bugging the heck out of me (and my
> users) is the "on-hold" feature.  When you're on a call, and
another
> one comes in, it doesn't ring the second line appearance on the phone, 
> even though I have it registered separately, and I've tried to make my 
> dialplan go to the second appearance/registration.  Instead, the second 
> call rings on the first line, and allows you to put the first call on 
> hold, and take the second call.  To do so, though, you have to press 
> the little down arrow and then press "Answer".  When the third
call
> comes in, it will ring the 2nd line.  I find this to be non-intuitive, 
> but I can get used to it.  My receptionists, however, are finding it 
> REALLY painful.  I'd just like to make the first call go to line 
> appearance 1, the second simultaneous call to go to line appearance 2, 
> etc.
> 
> Maybe somebody figured out a neat dialplan thing to get this done.  My 
> config that doesn't do what I want looks like this:
> 
> ; The first line appearance is registered to 18, the second to 1802, 
> and the third to 1803
> exten => 18,1,Dial(SIP/18,20)
> exten => 18,2,Voicemail(u18)
> exten => 18,102,Goto(1802,1)
> 
> exten => 1802,1,Dial(SIP/1802,20)
> exten => 1802,2,Voicemail(b18)
> exten => 1802,102,Goto(1803,1)
> 
> exten => 1803,1,Dial(SIP/1803,20)
> exten => 1803,2,Voicemail(b18)
> exten => 1803,102,Voicemail(b18)
> exten => 1803,103,Hangup
> 
> I guess the phone just doesn't register as busy when there is only one 
> call on a line.  It has to have two calls on a line appearance to 
> register as busy.  Has anyone figured out how to disable this hold 
> feature and just have the second call go to the second line, the third 
> call to the third line, etc?
> 
> Thanks,
> Noah Miller
> 
Hi Noah -

I use the SetGroup function in asterisk to disable call-waiting on
Polycom phones:

[no-callwaiting-out]
exten => _X.,1,SetGroup(${CALLERIDNUM})
exten => _X.,2,Dial(${TRUNK}/${EXTEN:${TRUNKMSD}})
exten => _X.,3,Busy

(Or whatever you have for outgoing calls. Just need to SetGroup here
too, in case your operator is making an outbound call).

[no-callwaiting]
include => default
include => no-callwaiting-out

[default]
exten => 18,1,SetGroup(${EXTEN})
exten => 18,2,CheckGroup(1)
exten => 18,103,Goto(1802,1)
exten => 18,3,Dial(SIP/18,20)
exten => 18,4,Voicemail(u18)
exten => 18,5,Hangup

Then I would do the same for 1802 and 1803 and in sip.conf put 18, 1802
and 1803 in context no-callwaiting.

-Tor.

Noah Miller wrote:
> I guess the phone just doesn't register as busy when there is only one 
> call on a line.  It has to have two calls on a line appearance to 
> register as busy.  Has anyone figured out how to disable this hold 
> feature and just have the second call go to the second line, the third 
> call to the third line, etc?
This is "call waiting"; if you can find a way to disable call waiting
in
the Polycom config, it will work the way you desire. I've looked for it 
before (briefly) and couldn't find it, but if you can figure out how to 
do it please let us all know :-)

There are ways using SetGroup and CheckGroup to accomplish this in the 
dialplan, but it's better to let the phone handle it (because if it 
works, you can go back to registering three line appearances to the same 
SIP username and it will work properly).

<snip>
> Well, thank you to Tor for the SetGroup/Checkgroup config.  It works
> well!  (Thanks to John for the contexts/dialplan version, too).
> Unfortunately, the phone doesn't audibly ring when the second call is
> coming in (just a visual prompt), and you have to press the line
> appearance button, and then the Answer softkey to actually pick up the
> second call, but I think it is still an improvement over the Call
> Waiting (at least logically, for my receptionists).
</snip>

I use also SetGroup and Checkgroup to roll 4 lines on a Polycom 600 for a 
receptionist.  Just to let you know, you can press the line-appearance 
button twice to pick up the call, instead of hitting the line button, then 
the Answer softkey.  I would also like to figure out how to make the phone 
*ring* when you're already on another line, but haven't had a chance to 
seriously explore it yet.

Eric

>> <snip>
>>
>>> Well, thank you to Tor for the SetGroup/Checkgroup config.  It
works
>>> well!  (Thanks to John for the contexts/dialplan version, too).
>>
>> </snip>
>>
>> I use also SetGroup and Checkgroup to roll 4 lines on a Polycom 600
>> for a receptionist.  Just to let you know, you can press the
>> line-appearance button twice to pick up the call, instead of hitting
>> the line button, then the Answer softkey.  I would also like to figure
>> out how to make the phone *ring* when you're already on another
line,
>> but haven't had a chance to seriously explore it yet.
>
> Could you explain what this "line appearance" button is? I am
just
> pressing arrow down to select the new incoming call and then press
> Answer softkey (which is rather annoying, one press would be more than
> enough).
The buttons to the left of the screen - the ones that correspond to 
your SIP registration(s).  On the IP500 there are 3 of them and, by 
default, they're blue.  On the IP600 there are 6 of them and there are 
LED's to go along with them.  They can be set as multiple line 
appearances or as speed dials.