Simultaneous Ring Feature (Alpha)

[caseydoug]

Yes, that was similar to my experience with VZW and Lingo, which also had simul ring. I didn't use VZW voicemail but had my unanswered calls forward to my Lingo line, where they would go to Lingo voicemail if I didn't pick up. If I turned the cell phone off, the calls would not ring my Lingo phone but would go straight to voicemail. So I left my cell phone on (going out of range was not a problem, since by definition I wasn't at home to get the call on the Lingo phone).

I think the behavior on VOIPo is different. Try it.

[fisamo]

OK, so you ask me to try it, and I did (yesterday). Here's what happened:
Upon dialing my voipo number, my Voipo line started ringing, and I heard one ringback tone on the calling line. The voipo line would continue to ring, but there would be no more ringback tones. After about 5 rings, the voipo line would stop ringing. Instead of transferring to voicemail, though, the process would start over--I'd hear one ringback tone and get 5 rings on the voipo line. I don't know if there some some kind of feature clash, because my cell phone is also my failover number...

However, when I ran the same test today, I got normal ringing behavior on the Voipo line, and my call properly transferred to voicemail after 5 rings. So, I turned the cell phone back on and redialed. I heard normal ringback, and both lines rang. But when I answered the cellphone, the voipo line kept ringing, and the cell connection immediately dropped. I'm going to try a few more things, and if this keeps up, I'll submit a ticket...

Edit ... Going to submit a ticket now. I tried using a non-cell (another Voip) number, and when the simulring target # answered, the call dropped there, too.

[caseydoug]

Yeah, I had a similar experience (see my thread below). Check your call logs for the time of the call, and I'll bet you see a whole bunch of calls at the same time between those two phones. In my case, I think it's related to the fact that the "Ring to" cell phone forwards back to the VOIPo phone if it is not answered. Simul Ring is still "alpha" after all.

[burris]

I suppose I should join as well.

Up until a few days ago, the Simul Ring always worked fine and I could answer from my cell when I was out and about.
The last 2 calls, and I didn''t get many over the weekend as we were away for 2 days, had the same experience as fisamo...I answered and the cell disconnected. My answer machine did pick up the calls at the house.
My machine doesn't answer until after 4 rings and I answered my cell long before that.

The last call that I answered on my cell when it disconnected was at 10am today. It did leave a CID on the cell. However...at 1:02pm yesterday, I was able to successfully answer a Simul Ring call from my cell.

Since it has worked well for me for quite a while, I suspect some sort of glitch or maybe they did some programming change..

[fisamo]

Going back to Brandon's note a few days ago indicating 'ironing things out' I suspect a few programming changes. That's not to say that Voipo has bad programmers, just that code doesn't always work as expected the first time. Right, Bill (Gates)?

I'll let everyone know what happens with my ticket. I don't see this as an urgent issue, just want to be sure they're aware of it.

[fisamo]

Update:

I just did the two simple simulring tests that I had wanted confirmation on. With simulring set for my cell phone, I dialed my voipo number (not from the cell phone, of course), and my cell phone rang. Answering the cell phone, the call was connected properly.

I then turned the cell phone off and repeated the test. As I expected, my cell phone's VM picked up immediately.

Final test--I dialed my voipo line from my cell phone, and it rang a few times before I disconnected the call. (If it had routed the call to my cell phone, my cell phone VM would have picked up immediately.)

I don't know what, if anything, was changed with the simul ring feature since I reported the issue, but it seems to be working properly now. As I said in my latest ticket update, I'd like to test a little more this afternoon before closing the ticket out, though.

[caseydoug]

Then maybe I should try the simulring test that I was asking about recently: I would do the same thing, except set my cell phone for no-answer transfer back to my VOIPo line, so that the call will go to VOIPo voicemail instead of my cell phone voicemail.

In your third test, it looks like VOIPo recognizes the cell phone number as a simulring number, and therefore does not simulring to it. In my case, the CID would probably show the original calling number rather than the cell phone number, even though the cell phone is forwarding the call. In that case, VOIPo will probably NOT recognize the number as a simulring number, and will therefore ring the cell phone, which will forward it back to VOIPo, which will ring the cell phone, etc.

I don't know how difficult it is to get VOIPo to recognize that the forwarding phone is a simulring number, but it would be a very convenient feature for me. I prefer having all of my voicemail in one place.

[caseydoug]

I don't like the "confirm calls" feature, although I have no problem with having it as an option. Lingo was able to route calls to Lingo voicemail even when simulring went to the cell phone and the cell phone forwarded back to Lingo. I don't know how they did it, but it worked. Lingo did have the disadvantage, however, that calls would go straight to Lingo voicemail when the cell phone was turned off (so I kept it on).

[fisamo]

Admittedly, as much as I whine for the feature, I completely understand that many people do NOT want to have to press 1 to take a call. I also have to admit that I am using my line with Asterisk and will continue to do so. As such, I should be able to program in simulring (with additional outbound trunks if necessary) to work exactly the way I want it to.

[VOIPoTim]

Admittedly, as much as I whine for the feature, I completely understand that many people do NOT want to have to press 1 to take a call. I also have to admit that I am using my line with Asterisk and will continue to do so. As such, I should be able to program in simulring (with additional outbound trunks if necessary) to work exactly the way I want it to.

The biggest challenge with doing a "Press 1" scenario is that we'd basically have to handle the audio for all those calls so it was stateful and we could detect the 1.

With our system we don't handle audio 90% of the time and just hand off calls.

Handling audio would be a big increase in load and the quality would be different (could be better or worse) on incoming calls when compared to normal non-simring calls.