I answered some of my own questions. Original information is below but now I just need to know:
Can I somehow set a call queue to route in the following way:
Person 1 -> Person 2 -> Group 1 (or Person 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 simultaneously)
Basically, I want it to sequentially call two people - if neither is available, it'll just call the whole office simultaneously.
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OLD INFORMATION
Hi there,
I'm not super familiar with the RC system, so I thought it best to ask if a plan I have is possible before trying to implement it.
I'd like to take a big database of contacts that we have and create forwarding rules for each of the contacts.
Each of the contacts is assigned to one 'account manager'. There is also a backup manager for when the account manager is on leave.
Ideally, when a known contact phoned us, the call would forward to the account manager. It would also 'know' when that manager wasn't available and instead forward the call to the backup manager. In the worst case where neither were available, no forwarding could occur (or whole manager group rings, as we have it currently).
I know it is possible to create rules within the API to redirect calls from specific numbers to particular extensions. The issue comes when detecting if someone is available. How would this behave when putting the phone on DND? Would I somehow be able to create a rule that says:
Go to Account Manager
if on DND :
Go to Backup Manager
if on DND:
Call manager group
Can the API 'see' when a phone is on DND? I'm concerned it doesn't and would just go to voicemail on the first phone.
Another solution that may work would be to not have any phones on DND but instead:
Go to account manager and ring 'n' times
if no pickup:
GO to backup manager and ring 'n' times
if no pickup:
Ring whole office
Any advice or alternative solutions with regards to this would be much appreciated. Particularly with how the API treats DND phones and how intelligent rules can be.
--------------EDIT--------------
Having done some more searching, I seem to have answered some of my question:
I think I'll have to create call queues to achieve this.
From my investigation, if I create a call queue with the Account manager and then the backup manager (sequentially), then I can set a custom rule to redirect calls from certain numbers to said queue.
If the account manager is set to DND, it will route directly to the backup.
However, if the backup is also not available, how can I set it to ring the whole office at that point? Can I somehow make it ring sequentially for the first two redirections, and then simultaneously if both are unavailable?
Can I somehow forward it on to another group at that point, which is set to ring simultaneously?