Summary: Simultaneous ring SOLVED with Callcentric call treatment and/or
voip.ms ring group.
I have an obi110 in one house and, via an el cheapo wireless LAN connection across the street, an obi100 in another building. Both obi's are in the same account in Obitalk.
Pressing the Obitalk speed dial numbers (followed by # for quicker action) on each alternate phone keypad gets the auto attendant (aa) to answer and then pressing 1 makes the phone ring at the other location. This lets my wife and I use them as an intercom, like the off-premise extension function we had previously with the phone company.
When it came to trying to change settings on the obi110 to make the obi100 phone also ring when a call came in on our Callcentric "home phone" line [obi110:sp1], I was not actually successful. I tried using the procedures such as putting: {ph,pp(ob3008xxxxx)} in the InBoundCallRoute of the obi110 phone port. But, as others wrote about in threads addressing this function, that invoked the auto attendant and even then really didn't get both phones to ring. So, it sort of didn't work, at least, not yet for me.
It's true, I may have made errors, and I'd love to know explicitly how to make it work the Obi way, but before I spent more time and tried moving an obi to a separate Obitalk account to try to get around the apparently related circle of trust issue, I had read once or twice about the Callcentric 'way' and so I decided to try the other approach.
Simultaneous Ring in Callcentric Call Treatment and/or Ring Groups in voip.ms:My obi110 registers to Callcentric on sp1, and to an subaccount/extension on my
voip.ms account on sp2 (and to localphone on vg3). My obi100 is (today) still connected to an unmentionable still-working ~ad-supported service on sp1, and to a different subaccount/extension at my
voip.ms account on sp2 (both obi units register to the
chicago.voip.ms server).
For me, to get both phones to ring simultaneously via Callcentric involves adding a
Call Treatment for Simultaneous Ring which includes listing my Callcentric 1777xxxxx number and the SIP URI of my
voip.ms subaccount/extension of my obi100. FWIW, if I had or added a second account at Callcentric for the obi100, I could have registered to it and used its 1777xxxxx number instead in the call treatment.
I entered the SIP URI in the call treatment list because those connections don't involve additional charge from Callcentric whereas forwarding and connecting to a cell or land/voip number/DID would invoke an outbound charge (on my CC paygo account). I suppose if I did have a smart phone running, say, Zoiper or X-Lite softphone registered to have another SIP URI address, that connection would ring/work, too. I'll try that on my Nexus 7, next...
After getting our home phone to ring in both places, I remembered that some calls come in to the home obi110 from two
voip.ms DID's. To get those to ring in both places, I created a
Ring Group at voip.ms including, in my case, the subaccounts/extensions registering to each of the two obi's. (I could have added SIP URI's or forwarding numbers, or other (voip.ms)main account numbers also, to the ring group.) Then, in managing each DID profile, I set the Routing for both
voip.ms DID's to the desired, newly created ring group.
Now, when calls come, they ring in both locations.
Out of curiosity, I'd still like to know the way to do the same thing using Obitalk settings, however, longer term, it seems to make more sense and be more flexible to make these kind of forking adjustments upstream at the inbound service provider level.
These forking options may become more important should quality or service issues arise with Google Voice number forwarding at some point in the future.
Thoughts, comments, alternatives, additions?
Hopefully, this summary will prove useful to other old Obi newbees like myself.
Best regards,
refrosted
