A pickup line is a virtual phone line on the PBX that multiple phones can monitor and answer. It does not belong to anyone in particular.
Overview
A pickup line turns a shared incoming call into a phone-button race: it lights up on every phone with a BLF (Busy Lamp Field) key mapped to it, and the first person to press the button takes the call. Two boundaries are worth keeping straight:
- It is not a user: no inbox, no permissions, no identity. Just a routable target with a status (idle / ringing / busy) that phones can watch.
- It is not a queue: it is one of the targets a queue can ring. The queue's own ring strategy, hold music, and timeouts still apply.
The line itself is trivial to configure (just a name). The real work happens on the queue and the BLF keys that reference it.
What it does
The line is invisible to the caller, who hears whatever brought them to it - the queue's hold music when it is a queue member, or ringback when a Dial step targets it - until someone presses a BLF key and answers.
A typical setup: create the line, add it to a queue's Pickup lines picker, then map a BLF key for it on each phone that should answer. When the queue rings the line, every mapped phone flashes, and the first press answers.
See also
- Queues - the most common consumer of pickup lines.
- Phone buttons - how BLF keys monitor and answer pickup lines.
- Call flows - the Dial step type can target pickup lines.