Phones Not Ringing

[ict2842]

I am using GRP2616s. I put them out at one location and did some testing. Tiered "agents" won't ring correctly. I moved to a ring all and eliminated some of the phones till I could figure things out. The phones were ringing correctly for the most part, but then stopped. I am guessing something is being put in as a "wrap up" time or as an "away" time if calls go unanswered. The agents for the call center are all configured like this:

Has anyone had Grandstreams act funny like this?

 

[MKNGRP]

Hi there,

I would increase the wrap up, reject and busy delay time, Try 20-30 seconds. Though they should not stop calls from going through - I have personally never seen that at such a low digit before.
Remember with call centers, any change you make - you must stop the Q and restart it.
Sometimes with grandstream phones, calls don't go through depending on the transport protocol of the phone - maybe you need to toggle between UDP and TCP to see which one works best.
Please see this document to help with understanding all the settings: https://docs.fusionpbx.com/en/latest/applications/call_center.html

 

[ict2842]

Most of the time, I was restarting the queue. Not stopping and starting. That likely caused some issues.
I'll have to go back to do the testing. I'll be sure to look at the protocols in use. I for sure want to do packet captures.
As for the reasoning behind the initial 1 second configuration: I want the phones to continue to ring. This isn't a call center environment so it's not a "John is away from his desk, don't bother ringing the phone" case. Oddly enough, Polycom and Yealink phones don't have this issue here.

 

[ict2842]

I went back and tweaked settings. There is no rhythm or rhyme to the ringing. I did a packet capture on two phones and exported the results of sngrep on FusionPBX.
Should the call ID found on the PBX also be found on the phone? I would think so but its not there on the phone side using sip.Call-ID == "value".
Assuming the call should be found, it's obviously not received by the phone being its not found and the PBX gets no response.

I have one GRP2616 that sits on my desk. As far as I have been able to tell, it doesn't have this issue. I thought I perhaps messed up the config of the FusionPBX domain somewhere so I tested with a different domain that has had no known issues with Poly/Yealink phones. These phones did not ring though the others did. I am super confused. Perhaps Friday I will go reset the phones once again but not apply any config - only SIP server and accounts. Maybe I am overlooking one of the few changes I am making as having an impact here.

 

[Jonathan Black]

Have you tried just sending the calls to a ring-all ring group, not call center and make sure they ring through? We do not use call center, so I can't help much there, but we have had issues at sites where their network infrastructure was poor, with too many simultaneous phones ringing (even worse if they have BLFs). We cut back to one or two and it works. Go back up to 5 or more and not all will ring. Fixing the customer's network seems to fix the problem. I'm not saying this is what's happening here, but if you temporarily eliminate the call center queue complexity, that may help identify the problem.

Also, if you have multiple registrations enabled, then make sure to use Enterprise strategy for the ring group. If you just need tiered calling, I recommend experimenting with the delayed ringing in the ring group. We've used that successfully where it rings one or two phones initially, then expands to others.

 

[ict2842]

A ring group, no. Currently it is a ring all call center queue. The network is an older Cisco router with a 25/5 service. My testing is done afterhours, so not much other traffic is there. BLFs might be the issue? I do have each of the 4 phones monitoring all the others.

I'll toy with the ring group next time I am on-site.

 

[Jonathan Black]

So when a call comes in, the network receives 4 invites plus 12 BLF signals (3 BLF X 4 phones) at once, and then the invites generate an ACK, not sure about the BLFs. I would certainly consider it as a possible problem. Another symptom that we've seen is that sometimes the call is answered on one, and the others continue ringing.

We've gone to using speed dials by default on all except for like the front desk/reception phone, unless the customer specifically requests it. We've found that this is usually more of a LAN issue than ISP. Updating the router/switch will often resolve it. But many customers just opt for the staggered/delayed ring cycle that you can do through ring groups.

 

[ict2842]

I've heard about the ringing issue. I haven't seen it though.
Ring groups do not queue, do they? I like the queuing function to ensure callers aren't immediately sent to VM. Either way, I'll probably go test Sunday so I have more time to be there.

 

[Jonathan Black]

It doesn't queue, but there are options to set the ringback tone/music, play an intro greeting, and extend the ring cycle quite a bit. You can even direct to another ring group after it times out, if you like. We have a couple of small call center customers (4-6 phones) where we just use ring groups.

However, even if you don't want to use ring groups long term on this application, my advice is to do it at least temporarily to get it working to ring on all phones. Once you know signaling is good, then move to using queues, as needed. Others may have different advice here, but my thinking is that ring group is simpler, so you aren't trying to diagnose signal issues as well as call center settings at the same time.

I'm assuming you've already done individual testing of each extension (point the Destination at each extension individually and make sure each one rings and can answer). If so, create a ring group, add one extension, test, and then add each extension to it, testing along the way.

 

[ict2842]

I did very little testing today. Being this isn't my full time job, it's hard to have a solid amount of time to knock out testing.
I created a ring group and put 0, 5, 10, 20 second delays on the phones. So far, no issue. I do need the steps/delay in ringing phones (for this specific client) so it works well (receptionist, admin assistant, realtor, owner). I was going to do more testing tomorrow afternoon but the same client has a more urgent request that will likely spill to Sunday, but I do hope to do further testing on Sunday for the phones.
Ring groups aren't so bad. I need further testing to see how multiple calls will handle, but I see pros and cons to continuing with a ring group. I do have one client that does need queuing, they do about 250,000/yr minutes between 3/4 people where as most of my other clients are 10-20K/year, so I either need to eventually get it figured out or go with Poly/Yealinks for that client.