Call pickup

[davidiwharper]

Hi Selintra

Quick question. I have a site which used to have a super old ISDN based PBX, and they are used to being able to pick up a call on a "line" (specific circuit) from other handsets rather than transferring said call between handsets.

They are looking for this functionality in Asterisk, and I haven't been able to figure out exactly how to do this. The closest idea I've had is to give them the code to pick up a call currently on hold on another handset, but when I tried to test this idea out I couldn't make this work (*8401 just gave a denied error).

Any clues as to what I'm missing?

Many thanks

[sysadmin]

Hello David,

I suspect what your client was using was a "key system" where lines are allocated to BLF keys on the phones and anyone can pick up a flashing line or join a line which is already up simply by pressing the relevant key.  These systems were very popular for small analogue or ISDN2 installations.   Above about 8 lines it gets very unwieldy and you need phones with lots of buttons.    These systems are not the same as a PBX where the lines are managed logically rather than physically.   In any event, once you get beyond ISDN2 (BRI) circuits,  lines don't mean anything anymore, they are just expressions of bandwidth. 

There is no easy way to pick up an on-hold call from another phone but you can pick up a parked call. Instead of putting it on hold, put it into a park.  You can do that with BLF keys in SARK/Asterisk and most ex "key system" users are happy with that because it is somewhat similar to what they were used to.

In general, most true PBX systems don't even try to emulate a key system. The upside is they provide different features such as call parks and extended call pickup, queueing and IVR and can handle vastly more endpoints and lines than a key system can. 

Asterisk is a PBX but it does have some support for key system emulation through 'Shared Line Appearances' and you can find reference to them in the definitive guide here

http://www.asteriskdocs.org/en/3rd_Edition/asterisk-book-html-chunk/SLA.html

SARK does not use these features but you could code up a custom app and handle it yourself if you wished, however, it is fairly complex to set up.