BLF audio alert (ring)

[Chris Barron]

Chaps,
when the current BLF audio setting came out i was delighted.
features.pickup.blf_audio_enable = 1
features.pickup.blf_visual_enable = 1
features.blf.ring_type =

But horrified to discover its a global setting for the phone - so all BLF keys assigned to cause the phone to ring in response to a call on any of the monitored extensions.

This makes it almost unusable.

Example 1- a PA supports 5 managers and wants to closely monitor calls to their phones. But the PA has 20 other users monitored on BLF where the old low level audio alert or no audio alert was adequate.

Example 2 - A receptionist answers most inbound calls but if she's not answering the call overflows to a call group of 5 people, each of whom have other BLFs populated .
The current result is the group will be audio alerted for all calls making the feature too disruptive.

Whats needed is the ability to select the Audio alert/ring setting to be made at BLF level not phone level. The setting could just be ring type under the Type 16 key.

Chris

[Travis_Yealink]

(06-17-2017 09:04 AM)Chris Barron Wrote:  Chaps,
when the current BLF audio setting came out i was delighted.
features.pickup.blf_audio_enable = 1
features.pickup.blf_visual_enable = 1
features.blf.ring_type =

But horrified to discover its a global setting for the phone - so all BLF keys assigned to cause the phone to ring in response to a call on any of the monitored extensions.

This makes it almost unusable.

Example 1- a PA supports 5 managers and wants to closely monitor calls to their phones. But the PA has 20 other users monitored on BLF where the old low level audio alert or no audio alert was adequate.

Example 2 - A receptionist answers most inbound calls but if she's not answering the call overflows to a call group of 5 people, each of whom have other BLFs populated .
The current result is the group will be audio alerted for all calls making the feature too disruptive.

Whats needed is the ability to select the Audio alert/ring setting to be made at BLF level not phone level. The setting could just be ring type under the Type 16 key.

Chris

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the feedback, we will send a feature request to our Product team and ask them to optimize this behavior, by the way, may I know how many Yealink phones do you have in total? What kinds of models are they?

Regards,
Yealink_Support

[Chris Barron]

Hi Travis,

The number of phones is 5K, mainly t46 but T41 and T48 also - I'm happy to do without on any of the smaller models. My 5k installed base comes from two estates / reseller channels - My new channel has been running for six months and we have 2.5K users.

There is also another Killer App that we would derive from this blf ring feature:-

The nortel/avaya product set has a feature called MADN - multi appearance directory number. We would use the differentiated ring on blf to emulate this feature. E.g We allocate the main ddi to the receptionists phone - each phone to ring in response to those calls would have a blf for the receptionists extension with ring set. This removes the burden of creating ring groups and queues to ring each phone.

I am aware that T4x has mca and bridge line appearance but we cant deploy that on our current version server.

[Travis_Yealink]

(06-22-2017 11:45 AM)Chris Barron Wrote:  Hi Travis,

The number of phones is 5K, mainly t46 but T41 and T48 also - I'm happy to do without on any of the smaller models. My 5k installed base comes from two estates / reseller channels - My new channel has been running for six months and we have 2.5K users.

There is also another Killer App that we would derive from this blf ring feature:-

The nortel/avaya product set has a feature called MADN - multi appearance directory number. We would use the differentiated ring on blf to emulate this feature. E.g We allocate the main ddi to the receptionists phone - each phone to ring in response to those calls would have a blf for the receptionists extension with ring set. This removes the burden of creating ring groups and queues to ring each phone.

I am aware that T4x has mca and bridge line appearance but we cant deploy that on our current version server.

Hi Chris,

I will send a feature request to our Product team.
If any update, I will let you know.

Regards,
Travis

[ipcsolutions]

(06-17-2017 09:04 AM)Chris Barron Wrote:  Chaps,
when the current BLF audio setting came out i was delighted.
features.pickup.blf_audio_enable = 1
features.pickup.blf_visual_enable = 1
features.blf.ring_type =

But horrified to discover its a global setting for the phone - so all BLF keys assigned to cause the phone to ring in response to a call on any of the monitored extensions.

This makes it almost unusable.

Example 1- a PA supports 5 managers and wants to closely monitor calls to their phones. But the PA has 20 other users monitored on BLF where the old low level audio alert or no audio alert was adequate.

Example 2 - A receptionist answers most inbound calls but if she's not answering the call overflows to a call group of 5 people, each of whom have other BLFs populated .
The current result is the group will be audio alerted for all calls making the feature too disruptive.

Whats needed is the ability to select the Audio alert/ring setting to be made at BLF level not phone level. The setting could just be ring type under the Type 16 key.

Chris

+1 from me.
Instead of a Ring Group ringing a group of phones, you could have a BLF on each of the phones that rings which you use to pick up the call. I have a number of customers who would like this.

Mike

[Chris Barron]

Hi Yealink support - any new from Dev if my original request for granularity of audio alerting on BLFs might be in the next release?

[Travis_Yealink]

Hi Chris,

I have sent this feature request to our PD team, and discussed with our product manager.

The feature request and usage scenario is reasonable, but we found it's hard to implement, for example, if a PA has 5 managers to monitor, and if 3 of extensions ring up at the same time, the phone could not deal with 3 ringtones together.
Secondly, our phone could see the BLF extension status on the phone screen, the PA could notice there is a BLF extension receives an incoming call, and check on the phone UI to see which extension it is.

Currently, we don't have plan to add this feature, but we will collect it, and if we receive more same request, we will reconsider it.
Hope your kind understanding.

Best Regards，
Yealink_Travis

[jolouis]

(01-05-2018 07:02 AM)Travis Wrote:  Hi Chris,

I have sent this feature request to our PD team, and discussed with our product manager.

The feature request and usage scenario is reasonable, but we found it's hard to implement, for example, if a PA has 5 managers to monitor, and if 3 of extensions ring up at the same time, the phone could not deal with 3 ringtones together.

That doesn't sound right. Since the setting is global at the moment you would already be facing that issue... i.e. if PA has 5 managers to monitor and BLF ring is set to enabled, if any of those BLFs trigger the phone will ring. How is that different from having a filter that basically reduces the phone so that it only rings if any of the 3 BLFs trigger it instead of all 5?

Should the phone not just handle the multiple BLFs the same way it does call waiting? (i.e. if 3 BLFs trigger at the same time, the phone rings and just flashes all 3 BLFs to indicate those are the ones triggering it.)

Not a feature I care about but curious about the rationale here since others seem interested.

[Travis_Yealink]

(01-05-2018 09:12 PM)jolouis Wrote:  

(01-05-2018 07:02 AM)Travis Wrote:  Hi Chris,

I have sent this feature request to our PD team, and discussed with our product manager.

The feature request and usage scenario is reasonable, but we found it's hard to implement, for example, if a PA has 5 managers to monitor, and if 3 of extensions ring up at the same time, the phone could not deal with 3 ringtones together.

That doesn't sound right. Since the setting is global at the moment you would already be facing that issue... i.e. if PA has 5 managers to monitor and BLF ring is set to enabled, if any of those BLFs trigger the phone will ring. How is that different from having a filter that basically reduces the phone so that it only rings if any of the 3 BLFs trigger it instead of all 5?

Should the phone not just handle the multiple BLFs the same way it does call waiting? (i.e. if 3 BLFs trigger at the same time, the phone rings and just flashes all 3 BLFs to indicate those are the ones triggering it.)

Not a feature I care about but curious about the rationale here since others seem interested.

Hi jolouis,

Thanks, this is a great hint, so we don't need to set different ringtone for each BLF, what we need to change is set all other important BLFs in a group, and set a special ringtone for this group, in order to distinguish the common BLF ringtone. When the customer hears the special ringtone, he/she would draw an attention, and then go to the phone UI and check which BLF gets incoming call.

@Chris, do you think this plan should OK for you?
If so, I will discuss with our PD team again.

Best Regards,
Yealink_Travis

[Chris Barron]

Travis, & Jolouis,
thanks for the input and thoughts. I wondered if it would be difficult to implement because it would need another attribute per BLF key. Although the phone does already handle differentlal rings based on the alert string. Setting it at group level would be fine, as you suggest. In fact thinking about it, this how Cisco achieve it, by having a tickbox against those blfs that need the audio alert.

Looking forward to seeing in a release in the near future.