Multiple pickup groups

For large companies with many employees, it may be necessary to control who can pick up certain calls in order to maintain company protocol and authority. When a customer has many extensions, the call pickup functionality may not be appropriate since any user can pick up any call.

This can be avoided by enabling a call pickup option for existing hunt groups.

End users configure call pickup within hunt groups on their self-care interfaces. The end user defines a group pickup prefix enables the Call Pickup Allowed option for the required hunt groups and assigns a primary group for each extension.

Assigning a primary group allows extension owners to pick up calls within that group by merely dialing the group pickup prefix. Note that an extension can only be assigned to one primary group.

With this functionality, it is possible to configure different call pickup scenarios, important for companies with many departments.

In this scenario, an end user dials a group pickup prefix and an extension number. The system checks whether this extension is ringing.

Take into account the following peculiarities of the directed call pickup:

• The extension whose call is picked up has an assigned primary group (a primary group member). Directed call pickup is possible if the extension used to pick up the call belongs to the same hunt group.
• Both extensions – one used to pick up the call and the other whose call is picked up – do not have an assigned primary group (non-primary group members). Directed call pickup is possible if these extensions do not belong to the same hunt group.

In this scenario an end user dials a group pickup prefix and a hunt group number. The system searches for any ringing extensions within the specified hunt group.

Take into account the following peculiarities of the semi-directed call pickup:

• An end user can pick up incoming calls to a hunt group number only if their extension belongs to this hunt group.
• Let’s say there is an incoming call to hunt group 999. This hunt group is assigned as primary for an extension. The extension owner can pick up calls to this hunt group number by merely dialing the group pickup prefix.
• Let’s say there is an incoming call to hunt group 999. Another hunt group is chosen as primary for an extension. The extension owner can pick up calls to hunt group 999 by dialing *<group pickup prefix>999.

In this scenario, an end user dials a group pickup prefix. The system searches for any ringing extension within the primary group that the end user picking up the call belongs to.

Take into account the following peculiarities of the non-directed call pickup:

• Let’s say hunt group 999 includes some extensions that aren’t assigned a primary group (non-primary group members). By dialing the group pickup prefix, non-primary group members can only pick up calls to other non-primary group members.
• Primary group members can pick up calls to all extensions within hunt group 999.