You can click the following link to enhance the reading of this article: Reading Blinds.

OK, folks once again I seemed to have stumbled upon a limitation and have been awaiting resolution from my techy guys for about 3 weeks now.

First, let’s introduce you to the basic idea which I found what could be and I feel most likely is a bug. For the record, the current stable release for the IPKII is 1.62 (unless you purchase the 2.+ version for enhanced networking features). **this has not been tested on 2.+ versions**

Situation: Mary is leaving the office for a week of seminars and she wants to have Kathy take her calls when possible. Mary doesn’t want to make this hard on herself so she uses the “Call Forward All” feature on her desk phone to forward all her calls to Kathy.

Now, I promise I am getting to the issue at hand…but let’s review what Mary expects to happen.

• Mary expects that any and all calls will ring on Kathy’s desk phone regardless of whether Kathy is already on her phone.

• She doesn’t expect that Kathy will be able to answer every one of her forwarded calls, but she does expect that Kathy will have the ability to.
• Furthermore, she also expects that in the event Kathy misses a call, the caller will land in her own personal mailbox after a predetermined number of rings.

Ok, so here’s the problem discovered. We found that in the scenario of a caller dialing Mary’s direct dial number (coming in over the ISDN PRI trunks) if Kathy is busy (already on the line), the caller goes immediately to Mary’s mailbox even though Kathy has 2 additional open lines (CAP keys).  Zoiks Scoob!

Now, let’s review this a bit.

• We made sure that every phone was setup with 3 individual CAR keys to have the ability to juggle a few calls.
• We made sure that programming allowed for multiple incoming calls (prg 15-02-22)
• Second call control is allowed (prg 20-09-01)
• Call queuing is allowed (prg 20-09-07)

Hmm, so whats the deal?  Shouldn’t Kathy get a ringing line appearance of Mary’s call on her second CAP key until the ‘no answer’ timer expires?  Wouldn’t this give Kathy more control?  Do you think Kathy now might feel inhibited to be on the phone if Mary is her boss and is expecting Kathy to get these calls?

So here I am 3 weeks later.  Why doesn’t the manufacturer see this as a big problem?  Some thoughts…

• I found a work around – so it can wait?
• No one else reporting this problem, so it’s still only the customers problem?
• Maybe they are working on a more important bug at this time?

Ok, enough ranting…here is the work around, but don’t mistake this for a fix, I’ll detail why in closing.

1. Program Mary’s line as a virtual button on Kathy’s desk phone (prg 15-07)
2. Don’t be lazy, go label the button
3. Program the virtual button to ring in whatever modes desired (prg 15-09)
4. Program a unique ring tone for the virtual button if desired (prg 15-08)
5. Program delayed ringing if desired (prg 15-11)
6. Delayed virtual ring timer (prg 20-04-03)
7. No immediate forwarding needed, both phones will now ring for Mary’s calls

in closing, we have now addressed the problem.  Well…sort of.  Obviously Mary didn’t set all this up herself effortlessly prior to leaving on her trip.  She had to call me to program it up for her.  She’ll also have to call me when she gets back to remove the programming.  Oops, and what about the label now left on Kathy’s phone…someone please hand me the white out.  J/K we could just leave it and turn the ringing off.  Done.

But wait, I forgot to see this from the business owners perspective.  He just had to pay me for 2 service calls to set this up when it should have been a few button presses by Mary.

Lastly, what if I was too busy when Mary called to have this setup?

So in final closing…let’s hope this gets fixed!

For the record, I WILL recant any statements in this article that are proven factually incorrect. I must also disclose that my intentions are not to bash any particular manufacturer but to better the product that has been delivered to the public for which they paid for.

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