Softkey Phone Features: Call Pickup, Group Call Pickup, Other Call Pickup

This blog entry is a continuation of our conversation regarding phone features and softkeys. The next Unselected softkey in the On Hook call state is the Group Pick Up (GPickUp) softkey. It makes more sense to talk about the Pickup softkey before the GPickup softkey, so we will begin a pickup conversation with the Pickup softkey, progress into GPickup, and wrap up with Other Pick Up (oPickup). The pickup softkey will allow a user of a Cisco IP Phone to pick up a different ringing phone from their phone. To enable this feature, the users must be members of the same pickup group. If there were six members of an IT support help desk in an open environment, management may decide to put all six member directory numbers into the same pickup group. If a member of the IT help desk group walked away from their phone, another member of the group could redirect the call to their phone by choosing the pickup softkey. To enable the functionality, a call pickup group would need to be configured in CUCM administration. To configure Call pickup, choose Call Routing > Call Pickup Group. Click the Add New button. Create a name and a number for the pickup group. This number does not need to follow your internal dial plan and this number does not need to be in the direct inward dialing (DID) PSTN range the company purchased from the PSTN provider. The call pickup group number will never be dialed directly. The number provides a mechanism to relate phone directory numbers into a group to provide coverage for people who have temporarily left their desk. There are some other settings that you can investigate, but the defaults work well for most environments. Click Save. Now that the call pickup number has been created, it can be applied to the directory numbers of the six phones in the IT help desk. To apply the Call Pickup group, navigate to the directory number configuration page (Call Routing > Directory Number). Choose your search criteria and click Find. Choose the configured Call Pickup Group from the Call Pickup Group drop down menu. Click Save and Reset the phones. The Call Pickup key is enabled in the Off Hook call state by default. Now that we have configured a Call Pickup group for the entire IT help desk, the company has decided to specialize support resources. Four of the group members will primarily support CUCM and Cisco IP Phones, while two of the members will specialize in supporting Cisco Unity’s voicemail (VM), automated attendant (AA), and Unified Messaging (UM). Two Call Pickup groups will be configured to relate the directory numbers of CUCM and Unity support members. Since management has sent all six students to the CIPT1, CIPT2, and AIUM Global Knowledge classes, the support members of one group will be responsible for covering calls of the other group. To enable the pickup functionality across pickup groups, Group Call Pickup will be utilized. Once Call Pickup groups have been configured, Group Call Pickup does not require additional configuration. The end users that will use the system must be trained to know the pickup group numbers that will need to be dialed when a phone is ringing in a different pickup group. It is best practice to standardize the ringers in each call pickup group, but use different ringers in different pickup groups. If an idle user in the CUCM support group hears a ringing phone in the Unity group, she can click the GPickup softkey and dial the pickup group number of the Unity support group. OPickup allows pickup groups to be related to each other. This eliminates a lot of end user training and memorization of pickup group numbers. In our example, the administrator of the system would relate the Unity pickup group to the CUCM pickup group and vice-versa. All call pickup variants are documented in the CUCM Features and Services Guide. Here’s a link to the pickup documentation for CUCM 6.1(1): http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/admin/6_1_1/ccmfeat/fscpickg.html The next blog will continue the phone feature / softkey conversation.