Prevent Secondary Extension from Ringing When Prime In Use

[bluewhite4]

I've got 4 phones in a remote office. They need to be able to all answer "main" number calls. To that end, I have the main number ringing a phantom, and then a secondary extension key of this phantom on all the phones. Problem is that if I'm on my phone, and an incoming call rings in to that phantom, it continues to ring on my phone, causing me to miss part of my conversation. Is there a way to prevent a secondary extension from ringing when the prime is busy? Tried DND and it has the same flaw.

[NTEDave]

I can't see any way of turning this off, you can turn audio indications of a Hunt Group call on and off but not Secondary extn from what i've looked at.

I'm wondering why you have incoming ringing set up this way though, surely the main number pointing at a hunt group would be neater and get around this issue. Is it so you can divert the main number to somewhere else occasionally i'm guessing?

[bluewhite4]

Technically the main number does point at a hunt group, with phantom members. The individual phones then have secondary extension keys of those phantom hunt group members.

Its done this way because the customer required the ability to differentiated between inbound calls to the general number, and DID calls to the individual. They also wanted "line" keys.

Mitel actually had a slight answer, and that was to change the timer for the ringing value of the "IP/Digital Secondary Extension Key Alerting tone" so that a secondary extension would only ring once. Thus it would function as an alert instead of a continous ring. Downside is that it would only alert ever, and is system wide.

[NTEDave]

Ah right, the old customer missing their Key System Scenario.

Yeah I noticed whilst testing that you get a chirp for the secondary extn ringing in. If you extend this timer I suppose you still get the flashing light and display telling you the secondary call is ringing in.

[dozer]

No. The secondary extension will always ring with at least a single notification. I am trying to wrap my head around this configuration.  I have installed a hundred 5k's and honestly, have used secondary extensions ONCE and that was for a very special situation.  Considering the users need to answer all inbound calls to the main number and differentiate personal DID calls, they must be using some type of call accounting?!?!  So I am guessing that they want the users to answer inbound calls from the main number and not have their phone ring when a DID call comes in?!?! Can you clarify?

[bluewhite4]

No, no call accounting on site.

The difference is that this is a small office. The manager of the office doesn't want to constantly hear the main line ring. But when she's in the office after 5, she needs to be able to answer it. If I set the secondary extension key to ring on 0, so that it never give the auditory ring, then when she's alone at night, she never hears that the main line is ringing, so never knows to look at her phone.

Also they have two different company policies for how to answer the phone. One if its a main number call, and the second if its a personal call. This is because this is one of four branch offices. Depending on staffing, the branch offices forward their main numbers to each other, so you may get someone at site B, when you called site A's main number. They needed to identify themselves as part of the organization as a whole for main number calls, and not just the individual at that branch.

Extending the secondary extension timer seemed to appease them. They do get the first ring burst, but then if they're already on a call, it doesn't constantly ring and cut off their ongoing conversation.

Like NTEDave said, they wanted their Key System functionality out of all of this. (Which of course the sales guys said they could/would have.)

[dozer]

Well, the identify the call itself, you can build a CRA for each office that times out to the hunt group for each office.  So when calls get transferred to the CRA, that rings the hunt group, the office phone will show the name of the CRA for identification.  Regarding the Office manager not wanting to hear the phone ring all day....great customer service =D  Half the time we spend our lives trying to make a system work like their old Key system but this is the one instance where we need to make it not ring but ring!