OLE@csli.stanford.edu (Ole J. Jacobsen) (08/23/89)
Thanks to all who responded to my enquiry. It would appear that the "best solution" is an expensive one, involving a voice mail hookup, while a couple of extra answering machines on the first 3 or so lines will probably solve the problem for most after hours situations. I should point out that the system in question, a Merlin II, has all 16 lines in a "pool" which means that outgoing lines are selected *at random*, thus teaching people to "only use lines from the top of the hunt group" will not work, and busying out other trunks is also not a good solution. Some kind of delayed-call-forwarding (no-answer transfer) would also work, but is probably best done within the system, I will have to "call the PBX vendor" as some of you suggested. (...and be prepared to spend a fortune...you know, sometimes I feel like that guy in the AT&T commercial who is about to be fired for having selected the wrong phone system, trouble is our system is made by AT&T, ok, ok, no more vendor bashing, I promise :-) Ole