You have to understand the feature.
At home this is no problem, you have one trunk, and one station.
The busy redial is a CO feature. With one line and one phone the intelligence required is not that difficult.
- Line A called line B
-Line B is busy
-Line A activated call back (cause it is actually the good old call back feature that the CO uses)
-Line B comes available
-The CO checks if Line A is available
-If so line A is called
-Line A answers the call
-With line A connected the CO calls line B
Now lets port this to a good old PABX, with multiple lines, and a whole bunch of stations.
To avoid having as many trunks as there are stations most companies have DID trunks.
Some companies like caller ID some don’t.
So the feature would only work if the calling party (Line A in the earlier example) calls from the PABX to the CO and his CLI (or ANI) is send from the PABX to the CO.
Then because this is a CO feature.
(cause there is no way that the PABX in our case the CM can check for lines not connected to the PABX if they are available or busy, and most people would not be pleased if the CM would just randomly keep calling numbers to check if they are available…… this can be done by the way and is called Predictive Dialing)
On that good old DID trunk with multiple lines there should be an call back, or busy redial as you call it, feature with an feature access code assigned.
(Most CO’s don’t have this, and most Service Providers do not want to invest in this for DID lines… there is simply never ever been a business case that showed them that the investment actually would make them some money)
During the busy tone the feature access code should be dialed (and note that would not be a feature access code from the PABX but from the CO so you can NOT make a button)
Then based on the CLI (or ANI) provided the whole process describe above (with line A and B would kick in)
Another reason for this not working would be that someone in the office would activate one or more Busy Redial actions in a day. (let us assume there are 3 Busy Redials activated to parties B,C and D) The caller in the office continues to conduct business as usual, so after a call that was successful the CO can complete one of the Busy Redial attempts.
Will the office worker remember all Busy Redial attempts he/she activated?
Will he/she know which of the three is being completed right now??
Some would say the CO can send the CLI (or ANI) of the called party (so either B,C or D), but what if one of those parties blocked CLI on his or her line???
And what would happen if party B,C or D is called because the line is available and an good old ancient answering machine answers the call, would that make your customers happy?
All in all if they want the feature, they should talk to their service provider.
And if they have the feature…. Would it work as they expected it to work???
It is like your PC at home and the one in the office, same devices but some things you do at home with your PC just cannot be done with the PC in the office
Please let me know if the information that was provided is helpfull.
Edwin Plat
A.K.A. Europe