Friday 30 March 2012

Outbound PSTN Calling from a Lync Response Group

A few weeks ago I had a client wanting response group overflow to dial out to another call center so their clients wouldn't wait on hold for longer then 30 seconds before talking with a live agent.

I added the call center 1800 number to the Response Group Queue under "Enable queue time-out". But once the timer hit the call would disconnect. In the Lync Logger I found an error "user does not exist 18008886655@domain.com". Well of course the user doesn't exist as its an outside tel.

The resolution to this is to assign the response group to a voice policy.

Note: If you have only assigned Global/Site Voice Policies, you will need to create a User Voice Policy in order to apply the policy to the Response Group. You CANNOT apply a Global/Site Policy to a Response Group.

To Create a new User Voice Policy,
Open the Lync Control Panel -> Voice Routing -> Voice Policy
Click New -> User Policy

Name your policy, Enable your calling features.
Click New, This will create a new PSTN Usage Policy.
Name your Policy ie (Response Group). Then click New for Associated Routes.
In the new Route screen name your route ie (Response Group Route)

Build a Pattern to Match

add the patten of the number you are wanting the Response Group to dial ie (+18008886655) your patten should look like this (^\+18008886655)

Suppress your caller ID if required, and assign your gateway, and click OK 3 times, which will bring you back to your list of Voice Policies.

Next, Open Lync Server Management Shell

and type in the following. Please make corrections in the below command where necessary

Response Group Name = The response group that will be dialing outbound via PSTN
Response Group Voice Policy = The Voice Policy you just created above.

PS> Get-CsApplicationEndpoint -Identity "Response Group Name" | Grant-CsVoicePolicy -PolicyName "Response Group Voice Policy"

Allow 5-10 minutes for replication to the RGS

15 comments:

  1. Thank you for your comment, and I am glad you enjoy this blog. if there is anything you wish to see let me know!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Tim,

    Thanks for this tip, I have a question related to this:
    I need an Interactive Response group where response 1 should send the caller directly to a external call-center and response 2 should send it to an internal support group with overflow to an external help desk.
    Is this possible?
    Can you have more than one forward to an external number on a Response group?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Peter,

      for response #1 you will need to create a "Response Group" Group, call it whatever you want but add no users, then create a Queue, again name it what you want, add the group you just created. Now at the bottom you will see "Enable queue overflow" enable it, set the "Maximum number of calls" to 0 and for "Forward the call" set to Newest call, and for Call action select Forward to telephone number, and enter your external call center number using a full SIP URI (sip:+19055552525@sipdomain.com), then click commit, then you will need to edit your Interactive RSG, and add the new Queue to option #1.

      NOTE* If you just add the Queue with out assigning a Group it will fail.

      Now for the overflow option #2, what you can do is again create a new Group, add your internal support users to it, then create a Queue, add your new overflow group. Now if you want this group to over flow for another group you created, in the Queue you want to overflow to the new one, open it to see the settings, and below "Enable queue time-out" you will see "Enable queue overflow". Here you can set number of users before overflow "Default is 10" then select "Forward the call" select "Newest call" then "Call Action" select "Forward to another queue" and browse for the new overflow Queue you just created.

      Let me know if this resolves your issue

      Delete
  3. Hi Tim and thanks for the reply,

    All is working now with a slight workaround. my problem was that the overflow support helpdesk is also an external number:
    * When I assigned the call-center voice policy to the Interactive Response Group the overflow to the external help desk stopped working.
    * When I assigned the external helpdesk voice policy to the Interactive Response Group the direct forward to the external call-center stopped working.

    I don’t know if this is the normal behavior or if I have done something wrong, but here is what I did to solve it:
    The internal Support has also a Hunt group with a voice policy assigned according to your blog instructions, I created a “dummy” support queue with a direct forward to the Support Hunt group telephone number and assigned that queue from the IRG.

    I have just started to look in to the Lync Enterprise voice with SIP trunk configurations, so I am sorry if something is “strange” or unclear.

    Best Regards:
    /Peter

    ReplyDelete
  4. Works for me, but the outbound leg of the call is from anonymous@mysipdomain.com (with the workflow lineURI in the referred-by header)

    Agent anonymity is not enabled on the workflow, and the route assigned to the voice policy does not suppress the caller ID.

    Is this by design or have I missed something?

    ReplyDelete
  5. The caller ID has to be suppressed in the voice policy for any sort of CID to be displayed. This is a workaround and not an approved solution by Microsoft. So there will be some minor bugs in this workaround. I am working with another team of Lync professionals to try and get this working correctly in Lync 2013 RTM.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks

    This is exactly what I needed.
    Well explained as well, it all makes sense.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Tim,

    Do you know if this also goes for Skype For Business 2015 server?

    ReplyDelete
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  9. Is it possible to enter the sip address of another response group as an overflow option?

    ReplyDelete
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