Transferring a call to a cell phone?

[paulnye]

Is there a way for me to have an IVR option that blind transfers the caller out to a cell phone and doesnt continue to occupy a trunk in my PBX after the transfer? I have a test IVR with option 1 transferring to virtual ext 200 (which has a followme to 1234445555#) and it successfully transfers the caller to the external number, BUT after the transfer the trunk in my PBX is still carrying the call. Any way to avoid that?

 

[jroper]

Hi

No there isn't, you will need to occupy two trunks, one for the inbound leg, and one for the outbound leg.

Joe

 

[tbrummell]

What you are trying to achieve is called a Tandem Transfer. First, you would need to find a carrier that supports it. You didn't mention SIP or POTS, if it was POTS I'm pretty sure Centrex lines still support Tandem Transfer with a hook flash, YMMV. If SIP, you'd need to search around and see if any of them support it, doubtful though.
Then, once you have the carrier sorted out, you'd need some custom programming of your IVR (not GUI programming, raw dialplan programming) to preform the needed operation on the channel to initiate the tandem transfer. Hope that helps. Keep us posted on your progress.

 

[jmullinix]

If you do decide to use tandem transfer from the phone company, here is a script that will do it.

; Use phone company's tranfer to send call to a cell phone. This only works on POTS lines.
; You call the context like this "custom-call_cell,<your cell phone number>,1" without the 
; quotes or brackets.  You must have the call transfer option on your POTS lines to make this
; work.
; Author John Mullinix, Cohutta.Com, Inc. 1.706.632.3343

[custom-call_cell]
exten => _X.,1,Playback(followme/pls-hold-while-try)
exten => _X.,n,Flash()
exten => _X.,n,senddtmf(${EXTEN})
exten => _X.,n,Hangup()