question

As Jessica wrote 11 months ago, "I checked with Support and they advised that DND for physical phones resides on the phone itself only, it does not communicate with RC servers in any way so it doesn't show BLF to anyone. "

As far as I am aware (I've been doing this a long time), no other provider does this either for the very same reason that Jessica wrote. Each individual phone, not to mention softphone and mobile app DNDs, are entirely different between makes and models. Do Not Disturb is generally used if, let's say, you are in your office with a client and don't want to be disturbed by your phone ringing because you are with a client or on a video conference. your phone won't ring and whoever is calling can simply leave you a message.

I'm certain that no one can tell me that even if it were possible to have the system do what you are requesting that a receptionist still won't either transfer a call to you or call your line to leave you a message even if your phone says DND.

Which brings us to another point, how would you propose to have that show on a receptionist's phone when she might have a sidecar with 30+ additional lines on it? Do you turn the BLF red? But you're not on a call so that wouldn't be right. They might assume you are on a call and will be done within a few minutes when actually you are on a video meeting with DND activated and you will be busy for one-hour. What would you propose for the RingCentral engineers to do, even if it were possible?

I don't know anything about your business like how large it is, how many agents you have, etc., but just a suggestion...maybe have your agents call the receptionist before they go DND and tell her/him, "I'm putting my phone on DND because I will be in a meeting with a client for 30 minutes. Please take messages." While not highly technical, it has worked for scores of years in many companies. Of course, your mileage may vary.

While that is by definition the DND feature, it's odd to me that a feature that lets the office know you're not to be disturbed via a visual indication is now missing on a cloud based service but is available on a PBX from a decade ago. This along with a simple intercom button press to go over speaker phone to speak to someone is such a basic feature that is missing on a service touts such forward thinking and feature rich services. While I do sell ringcentral I wont pretend that these features aren't something that should be on this platform. These aren't things are require any trailblazing, they've been in circulation forever on phones. RingCentral always says they spend so much on R&D and researching other features and services so they don't not offer a feature, to me it's disappointing that these simple two things merely fell through the cracks.

Chris, 
Correct me if I am wrong but the Samsung of 10 years ago was an on-site PBX, not the hosted PBX of most of today's today's providers. If I am correct, we are talking apples vs oranges. Different technology in a different time.

Nope youre totally right. An ancient phone system can make sure its extensions know that someone is away from the desk yet a state of the art cloud based phone system cant pull it off. If the BLF can tell me if someone is on a phone call, why cant it tell me if theyre away from the phone by pressing a button thats designed to let people know they are in fact away from their desk. Why would the person thats going away from their desk need to know that theyre leaving their own desk?