The short answer
A hunt group is the simplest way to make sure a call does not fall on the floor: one number, several phones, and a rule for what happens when nobody picks up. Groups are unlimited and included, and are usually numbered from 201.
Ring policies
- Simultaneous. Every member rings at once. First to pick up wins. The right default for a small team.
- Regular. Members ring in the order of the list, always starting from the top. The first person gets every call.
- Circular. The same order, but each call starts with the person after whoever took the last one. Spreads the load.
- Uniform. Whoever has been idle longest rings first.
The order Regular and Circular follow is the order of the member list; drag to change it. For Regular and Circular, Amount of Rings sets how many rings each member gets before the call moves on. A member can be in as many groups as you like, and a group can hold desk phones, Webex users, or a mix. With Simultaneous the call never moves on to the next member, which is the answer when someone asks to stop that.
When nobody answers
Two settings on the Routing tab cover two different situations:
- No Answer Calls Forward. Nobody picked up within the seconds you set, so send the caller here: a person, a cell, another group, a menu, or a mailbox.
- Not Reachable Calls Forward. Every member's phone is off the network, so send the caller here instead of nowhere.
To land callers in a mailbox, the destination is *55 followed by the extension whose mailbox it is; a bare extension rings that person instead. A group that should end in voicemail sets both forwards to the same *55 destination, because an unplugged office is "not reachable," not "no answer."
The zero-second trap
The seconds box accepts 0, and a group that forwards after 0 seconds sends every caller straight to the forward without ringing anyone. Usually nobody typed it: the portal writes 0 back whenever the forward is saved switched off, so a forward that was turned off and later turned back on carries a 0 until somebody retypes the seconds. A group "that never rings" is almost always this.
Groups with no members
One group in three on our accounts has no members, on purpose. A group whose 0-second forward points at an outside number is how a short extension reaches a cell, an office abroad, or a fax service. A group with Send All Calls to Voice Mail on is a shared mailbox. A door station gets a group whose forward dials the door. The one shape that is a fault is a group with no members and no forward, which rings nobody.
Voicemail on a group
The group's mailbox is off by default and is added from the + Features panel. Turning it on does not send callers into it; the route on the Routing tab does. See voicemail.
What a hunt group does not have
No business hours of its own: a group gets time-of-day behaviour by sitting behind an auto attendant or through Call Forwarding Selective with a schedule. No queue: a caller who arrives while everyone is busy hears ringing, not hold music with an announcement. No threshold alerts and no comfort messages. When you want those, you want a call center. Hold music itself is one setting for the whole company.
On the Settings tab
A pre-alert announcement played before the phones ring, Call Forwarding Always to send the whole group elsewhere for a while, Call Forwarding Selective with a schedule, Anonymous Rejection, and a missed-call email. Cards not showing are added from + Features.