Call Pickup

Owned by Valerio Ciotta
Last updated: May 04, 2022 by XCALLY Knowledge (Unlicensed)
2 min read

How it works

The Call Pickup is a useful pbx feature, it allows you to answer a call while it is ringing another phone or group of phones(other than the phone you are sitting at).

The basic functionality is this:

  • A call is placed in one or several call groups
  • If a phone belongs in a pickup group that matches one of the call's call groups, that phone may pickup the incoming call by calling *8 on his phone


Enable the Call Pickup feature

The call pickup feature is disabled by default, to enable it you need to uncomment the following rows into the file /etc/asterisk/features.conf


pickupexten = *8 ; Configure the pickup extension. (default is *8)
pickupsound = beep ; to indicate a successful pickup (default: no sound)
pickupfailsound = beeperr ; to indicate that the pickup failed (default: no sound)

and reload the Asterisk configuration by running the command:

asterisk -rx "reload"

in the Motion ssh console

Set the call group and the pickup group

To use the Call Pickup feature you need to set the CallGroup and the PickupGroup in the agent's setting or telephone.


In the example below the phone01 is a member of the call group 1 and it is allowed to pickup the calls of the same group (Pickup group=1)

pickupexten = *8 ; Configure the pickup extension. (default is *8)
pickupsound = beep ; to indicate a successful pickup (default: no sound)
pickupfailsound = beeperr ; to indicate that the pickup failed (default: no sound)



How to pickup a call

Once you set the call and the pickup groups to your agents and/or telephones, you can simply pickup a ringing call by dialing the code:

*8