Method to achieve "call confirm" functionality as in FreePBX?

[Charles Lail]

Hello,

When using hunt groups, Is there any way to require a user to press a DTMF key to accept a call after they pick up their phone? This seems to have been available in FreePBX for a while now, and I desperately need something similar in the sipXcom 20.08 installation that I run for a growing company.

My setup is:

• Several hunt groups, each calling 2 or 3 user extensions before falling back to a group-specific voicemail box.
• "Allow Call Forwarding" is ENABLED to allow a user to answer on either their SIP phone or their cellphone. (Especially important with many people still working remotely.) 
• "Accommodate Call Forwarding timers " is DISABLED, and the timeout for each extension set relatively low (10 or 15 seconds), to help prevent the call from being sent to anybody's cellular voicemail.

Unfortunately, I'm still having a problem with incoming customer calls being captured by users' cell VM, presumably because the particular cell phone is either busy, in DND, out of network range, etc. This is becoming a significant pain point for users.

The obvious workaround is for users to run a softphone app on their devices, but that's not a good option for us. For one thing, these are personal cellphones, and people don't want to be told to install yet another app--especially one that consumes data. Secondly, I've had bad experiences with some mobile carriers interfering with SIP and/or RTP traffic, which would render this option moot.

So, is there a way to implement anything comparable to "call confirm"? Or is it on the roadmap?

Thank you,

Charles

[Matt Keys]

No, and no it's not on the roadmap.

[Charles Lail]

Thanks for your response.

Is cell forwarding not that widely used, or wouldn't other users experience the same issue? I'd have expected it to be fairly common given the "rise of the mobile workforce".

[Todd Hodgen]

You need to ensure that you have all subnets you register sip devices from are defined in that list of addresses.    And, remove the ones that you won’t use as well.   

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[Matt Keys]

Once the call is forwarded off the system to the pstn (typically as a blind xfer) there is no way to bring it back, or for sipxcom to interact with it.

In the use case of a call forward from a hunt group to the pstn, that would typically require the hunt group pointing to a phantom user (or regular user) with a 'if no response' call forward to the destination cell phone in order to give it the calling permissions to use a defined pstn gateway. 

Once the INVITE is sent to the gateway, the gateway handles that call to the PSTN -- may it be your analog AudioCodes gateway or SIP trunk ITSP.

[Charles Lail]

Vanilla Freeswitch actually supports what I'm talking about:

https://freeswitch.org/confluence/display/FREESWITCH/Freeswitch+IVR+Originate#FreeswitchIVROriginate-Answerconfirmation

Forwarding to mobile/PSTN is (for me) the prime use case for the above, but it's otherwise somewhat of a tangent.

I don't suppose there'd be an easy way to leverage that capability of Freeswitch, would there?

[Todd Hodgen]

sipXcom is an open source product.   You could develop that feature out of Freeswitch I suspect and donate it to the cause.   Not sure what would be involved – could be a simple thing, or something with mass involvement.   

 

From: sipxco...@googlegroups.com <sipxco...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Charles Lail
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2021 12:10 PM
To: sipxcom-users <sipxco...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [sipxcom-users] Re: Method to achieve "call confirm" functionality as in FreePBX?

 

Vanilla Freeswitch actually supports what I'm talking about:

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[Charles Lail]

I wouldn't mind giving it a shot, tho it'll have to wait until the end users start yelling a little louder. :) (I manage my company's infrastructure "on the side", but it's not my day job.)

At the moment, however, I'm having a bigger problem that could render the call-confirm issue moot, which is the one that another user posted about here: https://groups.google.com/g/sipxcom-users/c/QR1-mR35V2A

Not changing the topic--just mentioning it as a prerequisite. I'll post on the other thread whenever I get a chance to dig into it unless the OP comes back with a resolution first.