IVR and receptionists

[jr@lcc]

I'm wondering if there's a straight-forward way to do the following...

We have a virtual office situation at our non-profit where everybody works from home. We'd like to be able to make it so that when our administrative assistant is logged in via her softphone/ipphone/etc (or something other than time specific since it changes regularly) that all incoming calls are rung at her extension in order to add a personal touch. Then any other time (when she's not logged in) they go right the IVR.

Is that doable?...try as I might to think of a way...nothing is coming to me.

Since I'm new to all this and don't know if it matters...I'm running FreePBX 2.5.1.2 and asterisk 1.4 on a pbxiaf install.

 

[wardmundy]

Set up a Day/Night Control and point your incoming trunks there. Use the Day option to pass calls to the receptionist and the Night option to send calls to the IVR. Assuming you set the control up with Feature Code 1, the receptionist can toggle the routing of the calls by dialing *281.

 

[rdinsf]

Another method, that would avoid the need for user intervention to toggle night mode on and off:

Point our inbound route to a ring group. The ring group is set to ring the receptionist softphone, with the "destination if no answer" set to the ivr.

If the receptionist is online, the receptionist phone will ring. Otherwise, the call will go to the ivr.

 

[hkgonra]

Another method, that would avoid the need for user intervention to toggle night mode on and off:

Point our inbound route to a ring group. The ring group is set to ring the receptionist softphone, with the "destination if no answer" set to the ivr.

If the receptionist is online, the receptionist phone will ring. Otherwise, the call will go to the ivr.

Thanks !!!
That is the exact setup I need and I have been sctratching my head how to do it.

 

[jr@lcc]

Thanks...those are both super options...I'll see what they prefer to do.

Anybody else got any whiz-bang ideas?