Line Hunt

What is Line Hunt?

Line Hunt is the capability to have an inbound caller forwarded from one telephone to another in a pre-determined order. In a typical small office phone system environment the receptionist may be the first in the list and if that phone doesn’t get answered it would go to the next telephone and so forth.

This scenario works well in an office environment when all staff can see the call progress and answer it when it comes to them, but it’s different in a hosted PBX environment where a business has several people all working in different and remote locations.

Line Hunt in a Hosted PBX (CloudPBX environment)

The biggest difference when line hunt is used in a hosted PBX environment is that once the call has finished ringing on your phone you are no longer able to answer it because it will be ringing on another extension. Because you are all in a remote environment you won’t hear the other phones ringing or see the lights flashing on the phone to indicate that it’s ringing.

There is a scenario where this progress can be seen by the receptionist and that is if she has a reception console attached to her main incoming number that shows where the calls are now ringing.

Difference Between Line Hunt and Follow-Me

In an small office phone system the typical terminology of Line Hunt is used in terms of a phone ringing on various different phones whereas Follow-me is a feature that is often referred to when someone diverts and office phone to a mobile so that they are always contactable.