Cloud PBX - Auto Attendant - Transfer to External number

[Austin Ayers]

Hey There! In the process of deploying a proof of concept for auto-attendant at my org.  Wanted to know if there is a way to have a menu option transfer a call to an external number.

My use case...

Caller dials into main Auto-attendant "... press 1 for sales, press 2 for customer service...", when the user presses "2" i would like the autoattendant to direct the call for customer service to an external PSTN number, one that handles our call center.  IS this possible, will it be possible, any workarounds?

Thanks in advance for your input.

[#2]

I have not done end to end testing... However it may appear that a CAP (Common Area Phone) license could be used in place of a fully licensed user...  so the appropriate licensure would be.  CAP @6$ and Domestic dialing @ 12$.  I am basing this off the fact that i was able to set call forwarding on a Hoteling CAP in the office.  I do not know fully if that would work once i disconnect the physical phone itself but it would appear so as the change on the device seems to commit the change once in place, havnt tested if it can be added to a call queue though.  (running cloud pbx using teams only currently).  To note of course that All calls even once forwareded externally are still connected through your pbx so they are still billable...  

For this reason we split our system, our AA now offers sales, operator, and dial by name.  But then Says if you need customer service hang up and dial a new 1800 number.  Painful in the short term, but probably better all around.

[#3]

@Brian_J_Weiss 

They now have resource accounts, and they can be setup to just forward to external. Also, you (I believe) can create a "contact" in the admin panel of the tenant, and there you can specify the "external number" of the contact, which can be used to forward calls to. 

Take care

[#4]

@Austin Ayers You cannot route call queue calls to a Common Area Phone. The object cannot be a member of a distribution/Office 365 group.

You need a licensed user account with Phone System license, which can be added to E1/E3 licenses or included with E5.

Regards,

Kenneth ML

[#5]

@Kenneth Meyer-Lassen Yeah, exactly correct. For "Common Area Phone".

If you wanted to have an option as a 'user' that sent calls to another external number. Then thats diff.

[#6]

@Austin Ayers It is not supported yet by Microsoft.

Workaround:

1. Create a service account with teams-only and then transfer calls to PSTN number from teams client settings for this account.

2. From AA configuration, forward call to the service account.

Regards,

Fady

[#7]

@Kenneth Meyer-Lassen 

This worked great for me. Thanks. We had the same problem, no onsite PBX (Skype only) and needed to forward the call queue to a land line (in a physical building). If I added any skype account to the call queue, and forwarded that number - it just rang the skype phone and did not "follow" the forwarding instruction.

After reading your response, I used an old user account who was no longer with the company. Forwarded their skype phone to the land line number. Set the call queue to forward to their Skype account after 0 minutes and it works great.

Thanks again.