Route Points

[CCostantini]

Can anyone give me good examples about how route points work in a real scenario?

[CelticTech]

Route points allow third-party applications to work with the ShoreTel. Also, used for off-site transfers.

Most commonly is the off site transfer - emergency line, answering service forward etc.

Unless you have something like a Contact Center or the auto-dialer, then you create IVR ports to send the calls into the CC.

There's all kinds of other features to enable, schedules, mailbox greeting, personal assistant etc.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

[jworkman]

They work great we use them for several reasons. Off site speed dials, point DID,DNIS digits towards them. Could use them for many reasons.

[CCostantini]

ok, but what is the utility to have a DID pointing to a route point? Wht happens next?

[blanning]

I have used them several times to off-site forwards. You point your forwarded number to the DN of the route point and then set it to forward always to another number. I have also similarly used it to create phantom DN's, you forward the route point to another number so that users who dial an unused number still get the person they think they want. (This is great if a secretary used to have 4 numbers because of the way the old PBX was configured).

[ShoreTel_Dave]

ok, but what is the utility to have a DID pointing to a route point? Wht happens next?

The route point can behave like a normal extension except it can never be assigned to a physical phone.
So you can dial it and cause it to call another number, if there is no answer it can call a different number (or voicemail)
You can have it do different things based on time of day.

If you are using the ShoreTel contact center, then the route point is the start of the call flow through the contact center. So if you would like calls from outside to be routed through the contact center, you would need to assign a DID to the route point, although in a lot of cases we use DNIS to the same end.

Another time I have used Route Points with external numbers was when I had an organisation using some spare office space, they had a DID number on the system and a few months later they moved on, I was able to get the route point to replace their handsets (and make an extension license free for something else) and point their DID number to their new premises for a few months while they updated all their contacts with their new number.

Here is another scenario, take a school with hundreds of staff. They have a common room with a couple of phones in it which they all share. The operator wants to transfer a call to a certain member of staff and have it ring the phone where they are most likely to be found.
So we create a route point for each member of staff which gives them their own extension number, but targets the route point to call the phone in the staff common room. The route point can have a mailbox, so if the call for that member of staff could go into their own mailbox.

[CCostantini]

is little bit clearer. I will try to play aroudn with them Thanks to all for the kind information.