Outbound transfers

[mmd]

This is something that has dawned on me, at home, or even at work (where we use avaya IP phones in a call center), it is impossible to transfer an outbound call.  Why is that?  On the softphones at work, the transfer button is greyed out, the only way we can do a transfer is if it was a conference first, THEN transfer.

But at home, when I hit transfer on an outbound call, the phone instead of a beep it makes on button presses, lets out a low short buzz..  I can conference on that, but that phone being just an advanced POTs phone, is incapable of transferring a conference, unless I manually transferred after a conference, but that doesn't work either.

Why would this be?

[Adam]

Which phone systems are we talking about, at the office and at home?  Please tell us a little more.

[mmd]

Both.

The phones at work are Avaya PBX's, and home is a Vonage system connected to my phone via a RJ14 cable to the phone (for 2 lines in one cable).

Both of them though are incapable of making a transfer to another number/line, if I am the one who called the person in the first place.

[GG]

I designed the outbound transfer feature for analog lines on the Panasonic PBX & voicemail systems in 1998.  They adopted it into the platforms in 2004 and expanded it to include PRI (ISDN) and a wider range of options. 

If you are using analog CO lines, they need to be equipped with the "transfer/release" or "transfer/disconnect" feature, or Centrex or equivalent. 

If you have analog lines with that feature, and Panasonic PBX of type KXTD-816, -1232, anything in the KXTDA product range, and voicemail systems in the KXTVS or KXTVA range, I can write another of my famous three-page essays that get me in trouble around here, to tell you how to make it work.

Even better if you have any form of ISDN and any of those PBXs & voicemail systems, that essay is only two pages:-). 

For other brands of PBX and for VOIP service, I don't know.

(Cisco PBXs often bury important features (including Hold and Transfer) under layers of screen menus unless you're willing to pay an obnoxious yearly license fee per telephone to have those features appear on the top-level menu.   Other brands may have picked up this abusive habit by now as well.)