Follow Me

Follow-Me settings are just like a mini ring group, but it's tied directly to your extension. It's configured exactly the same way as a ring group, including the ability to use an announcement to alert people that they're being transferred elsewhere.

The dialplan has been structured such that any place where one might dial to ring an extension, the Follow-Me ringgroup will be engaged if it is defined. This means that from an IVR calling from outside and internally when dialing an extension you will reach the ring group in place of the extension. This behavior is enabled by simpling including the ext-findmefollow context ahead of the ext-local context any place that extensions are dialed.

There are other 'creative' uses of the Follow-Me function. At the simplest, you can simply put in the
extension of the Follow Me number with a choice to go to it's voicemail if not answered and you will be
accomplishing exactly the same thing as if the extension was being dialed. However, you can now diverge
with such simple things as changing your ring time to override the default, adding an announcement,
going to an alternative voicemail or other destination if not reached, and of course adding multiple
numbers and ring strategies when somone tries to call that number.

The one place where Follow Me will not override a local extension is where the local extension is chosen
as an explicit 'destination' from various other screens. In those cases, the destination is being
explicitly sent to ext-local and will not be intercepted by the ext-findmefollow context.

There's a write up on using ringgroups for this at VoipSpeak.net