Alternate Mode Workarounds Needed

[ht_!]

First, I apologize that this is so long. Just trying to be thorough.

We’ve recently started working with the Office 250 system and there are a few things we’re having trouble with. We come from a Toshiba background and we had a lot of workarounds for their systems after working with them so long, but now we’re back to square one it seems.

One of the issues we’re having is the ability to put the system into an alternate mode like we could with Toshiba.

We have a customer that is wanting to have their normal Open/Closed greetings, an all-staff meeting greeting and a completely different call routing setup for ‘Bid Day’. This is where we are with programming.

STAR App:
   DAY/OPEN:
   Auto Attendant:
      Press 2 for DBN
      Press 0 for Operator
                          If Operator doesn’t answer after 4 rings it delays to another hunt group with 3 other ext’s.
   
   NIGHT/CLOSED:
   Auto Attend/Night/Closed Greeting:
      Press 2 for DBN
      Press 0 for Gen MB

They want to be able to change ‘modes’ for an all-staff meeting, for about an hour, once or twice a month. We would normally use the Night Ring Button for this so they could easily toggle back and forth.

   Night Ring:
   Auto Attendant:
      Press 2 for DBN
      Press 8 for Gen MB
   
Our issue lies here, they are a construction company and have ‘Bid Days’ where they want all the phones to ring without going to the Auto Attendant.

After 6 rings, instead of going to a Gen MB, they want it to go to the Auto Attendant and follow the call routing that was listed in the DAY/OPEN mode in the STAR app above.

The tech thinks we can put ‘Bid Day’ on the Night Ring instead of the all-staff meeting, but thinks we would need a different STAR app for the all staff meeting, or vice versa, but we haven’t found an easy way to change to that 2nd STAR app.

We could give the customer access to the programming with very specific instructions on how to change to a different app, but that doesn’t seem prudent. We even tried locking some stuff down and giving them very limited access, but after doing so we weren’t able to access the call routing info so that became pointless.

I did some reading through the forum and in some manuals and it seems like we can schedule to another app as long as we know the days/times to play the other STAR app. But they don’t have a set schedule for the staff meetings or Bid Days. Is there another way to do this? Thank you in advance for any help.

[DND ON]

I would abandon the STAR applications and use manual routing for everything.

Point the day ring-in directly to the operator phone, with an immediate forward path for CO ring-in (or Call Routing Table, whatever is appropriate) to the day auto attendant. For meetings and bid days, manually forward the operator phone to those special applications, which will over-ride the immediate forward to the auto attendant.

Point the night ring-in directly to the night auto attendant.

[Tech Electronics]

ht_!,

Here is what I would do if it were me, and I am assuming that the STAR is also used for Holidays.

Day Ring-In: Phantom
Night Ring-In: CRA: Inclement Weather

Phantom - Make sure the passcode for this extension is cleared out.
   Manual Forward: - 359[Phantom Ext]#355[STAR]   - Normal Operation
   Manual Forward: - 359[Phantom Ext]#355[HG: All Ring] -Bid Day

Create a Personal Speed Call Key on the phone you want to handle this operation; typically the one with the Night Mode Button. You can create up to 10 manual personal speed call keys so they can send calls to multiple locations for different thing, such as their All-Staff Meeting, but I would just put those in the STAR as a scheduled event.

STAR:
1-18: Holiday and Scheduled Events
19: Weekdays [Mon-Fri]
20: Weekends [Sat-Sun] - Optional
Default: Night AA

Use the Night Mode to put the system in Inclement Weather condition so users don't have to drive in to set it. This can be done by using the Configuration Assistant and logging into the Administrators phone and setting Night Mode on. When they come back in to work they can remove Night Mode by pressing the button and then just to make sure press the Manual Forward Speed Call for Normal Operation Mode.

Thanks,

TE

[ht_!]

DND ON, Tech Electronics,

This is Great! Thank you both for the quick response. This is something that we've been wondering about for a while since we have a lot of customers who want to do some crazy stuff sometimes. I'm going to get this info to my tech and see if we can implement one of these designs to achieve the result we're looking for.

Once we work through it, I'll try to update this post with the results.

Again, thank you very much for the input, I'm hoping this will solve the issue.