In the previous post, I covered how to have a receptionist have first kick at answering a call, then for the call to be handled by an Auto Attendant if they weren’t available. You might want to have a backup for the receptionist if they’re not able to answer the phone. The easy solution is to also add this person to the Response Group group as an Agent. The trick here is to specify the two agents, and set the Routing Method to Serial in the Group configuration:

Wit this setup, calls will always first ring “AApple”, then after the Alert Time has expired, the call will go to “BBlueberry”, and finally to the overflow destination. Be sure to watch your Queue and Group timers as discussed here to make sure your call doesn’t bounce around between the users.

This solution works well if you only need a main person and one backup. If you need a main group and a backup group, you would configure two groups, and then create an ordered list in the Queue settings:

Make sure that the sum of the Group timeout values equals the Queue timeout value, otherwise your call with ring “Reception_Main”, then “Reception_Backup”, and then “Reception_Main” again. For example, I might set the Reception_Main group to 10 seconds, the Reception_Backup group to 15 seconds, and the Queue timeout to 25 seconds.

You can include the users in the “Reception_Main” group as agents in “Reception_Backup” if you want the users in the main group to be able to answer the call if it’s ringing the backup group.

I’ve seen this approach used for a shipping/receiving door buzzer. The driver pushed the door buzzer, which automatically dialed the Response Group (this behaviour was configured in an AudioCodes MediaPack). The Response Group had the shipper/receiver as the main group, and then some other nearby staff who could act as their backup.

Up next: Sending a call from a Response Group to a PSTN or other PBX phone