N-way Calling & Attended Transfers

TL;DR Quick Instructions

  • #2 Attended Transfer – initial caller is placed on hold; awaits extension/phone number followed by pause or # to confirm
    • *4 N-way Call – merges both
    • *5 Swap Call – return to previous call while the new call is placed on hold
      • *2 Record N-way Call – creates one recording PER PARTICIPANT in the call.
      • *3 Stop Recording N-way Call – equivalent to all participants hanging up.
    • *8 Complete Attended Transfer – hangs up and bridges the two calls, equivalent to the transferer hanging up.
    • *9 Abort Attended Transfer – hangs up newest call.

N-way Calling via Attended Transfers

Hello,

With this new feature (available to all users without exception) you can perform both attended transfers and an “n-way” call.
Meaning you can bridge other calls into your call while on a call yourself.

First, you must dial your initial contact.

Then press #2, you will hear Asterisk say “Transfer” out loud to you. You have three seconds to begin entering numbers before Asterisk aborts automatically and returns you to your call with the “not a valid extension” voice prompt. Once you enter the extension/phone number, press # again to confirm or wait for it to accept your entry. Asterisk will then dial and attempt to connect the call. It will NOT return you to your previous call without either aborting the transfer with *9 or switching back to the caller temporarily with *5.

Once your recipient answers, you can speak to them as you would a normal call.

To talk to your previous call press *5 to do so, this will place the new call on hold.

To finish the transfer, either hangup or press *8.

To cancel the transfer, press *9 and it will hangup the newest call.

To bridge both calls press *4 for an n-way call. This can be done repeatedly for the amount of callers necessary, but we encourage requesting Conference rooms be added to your dialplan if you routinely use this for large calls of greater than four call participants.

Once you are in this n-way call, you can record it by pressing *2 (this works outside of n-way calls, but we suggest only using it in this scenario, *1 works on two-party calls just as before to start and stop recordings). If you are not part of an n-way call, *2 and *3 still work as expected, but will create one recording just as *1 does. The reason for these extra options is a limitation of the software used for the phone system.

To stop an n-way recording, press *3. You will notice there will be a recording for each participant (that is, each phone number added to the n-way) in the call. This eliminates having to track down recordings due to them being available under all associated numbers and extensions. It may create extra recordings, but this is acceptable as they will have identical timestamps and can be easily traced by us in the future should you need access to them.

Please enjoy this new feature and let us know if you encounter any issues.

-Greg