The Issue
So, you have just setup your receptionist with the Lync Attendant console as part of your deployment. Now tickets are coming in advising that when the Receptionist transfers calls to Lync Queues, the calls fail.
The Lync 2010 attendant includes a feature known as “Safe Transfer” in that if the recipient of the call cannot take, or rejects the call it is sent back to the Attendant to allow the operator to handle the call as appropriate.
Sometimes this can cause issues with Response Groups in that when the call is transferred to a Response Groups IVR by the attendant. The IVR attempts to transfer the call to the workflow before accepting the call, this in turn makes the Attendant snatch the call back from the RGS service, aborting the RGS workflow and returning the call to the operator.
In summary, Transfers from the Lync Attendant to Response Groups fail.
The Fix
The fix is a simple one. Disable Safe transfer.
– Note doing this, will disable safe transfer for ALL calls, so unsuccessful transfers by the operator will go to the transferee’s voicemail. This may not be the desired business workflow.
Disabling Safe Transfer
• Login to the Lync 2010 Attendant as the desired user
• Click the Settings menu and Select “Options”
• Navigate to the “Actions and Alerts” tab
• Disable the “Return a transferred call to me if the recipient does not respond” checkbox and click OK
The user can now successfully transfer calls from the Lync attendant to the RGS workflow.
You can consider deploying TekIVR as call attendant for Lync. TekIVR can query presence status of a Lync extension prior to transfer a call. You can transfer the call to alternative destination based on presence status. Please see http://www.kaplansoft.com/tekivr/TekIVR-Lync.pdf