Configuring pickup groups

Question

We have a site that has a PagePac unit connected to a FXS port. CM is
4.1.3sr2.
When the receptionist steps away / end of day, they forward the main
number to the overhead night bell.
The Night Bell is in a pickup group, as are all the phones, so that
after hours anyone can pickup incoming calls.
The problem is that because all phones are in the same pickup group, any
user can pickup anyone else's ringing phone, which they don't want. The
other issue is that once a user hears the overhead, they press Pickup
and the incoming call starts ringing at that phone, they get CallerID,
and then can't hit iDivert to send it back to the main number's VM box
if they don't want the call. Instead, they have to wait for RNA in
order for the call to end up in the main number VM.
I investigated the other pickup options:
Group Pickup might work, but means that it's now a two-step process to
pickup a call, but it will allow me to put the phones in one pickup
group and have the overhead in another pickup group. I would remove
"Pickup" from the softkey template for the phones.
I tried to configure OPickup, thinking that I could put the phones in a
pickup group where the pickup group number was in a a partition that wasn't in their calling search
space, and have the overhead in an associated pickup group that _was_ in
their CSS. Doesn't work; CallManager won't let you configure a DN with
a pickup group whose partition isn't in your CSS.
Any other ideas on how to implement this functionality?

Answer 1

Cisco AS recommends "longest idle hunt"mechanism among the members to be the most fair for the hot line staff. For overflow condition, Cisco AS suggest that we use vm dn. However, if you put the vm dn in the longest idle hunt group, you occasionally will have users rolling directly into the vm. To avoid this, create a hunt group with "first available hunt " and put the pilot of the "longest idle hunt" (in a nested fashion) first and then the vm DN (with always route option checked) second.