Call parking service allows a person to put a call on hold at one telephone set and continue the conversation from other telephone set.
The “call park” feature is activated by pressing a preprogrammed button (usually labelled “Call Park”) or a special sequence of buttons. It transfers the current telephone conversation to an unused number and immediately puts the conversation on hold. (This is called parking the call; and the call is said to have parked onto a certain number or channel. Essentially, call parking temporarily assigns a number or channel to an incoming call.) The call can later be retrieved.
If the desired called party is not the person who picked up the call, and the desired called party is at another location, the person who picked up the call may park the call and then asked the desired called party to retrieve the call.
For example, Karen is an assistant and Holly is her leader/boss. If Karen picks up a call whose desired called party is Holly, Karen can park the call to be held and say "Holly, you have a call parked on channel 1" and Holly would dial special number to retrieve the call.
miniSIPServer seperates it to two services:
- Call park
- Call retrieve
2.1 Call park
"call park" service is used by local users to park the incoming call. When one person wants to park the incoming call, he/she can transfer the call to "*70*n". "*70*" is the special number prefix for parking call. "n" is the channel number, it is between 1 and 99. That means the miniSIPServer can permit at most 99 parking call at the same time. In above scenario, Karen can dial "*70*01" to park the call on channel 1.
Once the call is parked, the caller party will hear music. A set time is then provided for any person to retrieve the call on other telephone set. By default, the time value is 60 seconds.
If no one retrieves the parked call within the set time, miniSIPServer will release the parked call.
2.2 Call retrieve
"call retrieve" service is used by local users to retrieve the parked call. When one person wants to retrieve the parked call, he/she can dial "*71*n". "*71*" is the special number prefix for retrieving call. "n" is the channel number where the call is parked on. In above scenario, Holly can dial "*71*01" to retrieve the call which has been parked by Karen.
