Desk phones

Using your desk phone

Button names vary a little between handset models, but every phone we deploy does these things and the sequence is the same.

Making and answering calls

• An outside number: dial it as you would from a cell phone. There is no 9 to press first.
• A colleague: dial their extension, usually three digits.
• Answer: lift the handset, or press the speaker or headset key to answer hands‑free.
• Redial: the Redial key, or scroll the recent calls on the screen.

Transfer

There are two kinds and the difference matters to the caller.

Announced transfer

1. Press Transfer. The caller is put on hold.
2. Dial the extension you are sending them to.
3. Wait for your colleague to answer, and tell them who is holding.
4. Hang up. The caller is connected.

If your colleague does not want the call, press Cancel or End and you go back to the caller.

Blind transfer

1. Press Transfer.
2. Dial the extension.
3. Hang up right away.

Faster, but nobody is warned. Fine for “put me through to accounts”, less good for handing over an upset customer.

Hold and park

These sound similar and are not.

• Hold keeps the call on your phone. Only you can pick it back up.
• Park puts the call in a shared slot that anyone can retrieve from their own phone. Use it when the person you need is not at their desk.

To park, press the Park key — the phone will tell you which slot the call is in. Tell your colleague that number, and they dial it from their own handset to pick the call up.

Conference

1. While on a call, press Conference.
2. Dial the third person and wait for them to answer.
3. Press Conference again to join everyone together.

Do not disturb

The DND key stops your phone ringing; calls go wherever you set your unanswered calls to go. Worth knowing: if you are in a ring group, switching DND on means the group rings one phone fewer, so during busy periods it is better to set your calls to overflow than to disappear.

It is also the single most common cause of “my phone stopped ringing”. Check the screen for the DND indicator before reporting a fault.

The keys down the side

The programmable keys are configured centrally as a layout and applied to your phone, so a change made once appears on every phone that uses it. Ask your administrator if you need one changed.

They do not light up when a colleague is on a call. A key pointed at a colleague works as a speed dial. Showing who is busy is not switched on yet — we would rather say that than have you watch a lamp that never changes.

When something is wrong

The screen says it is not registered

Work through this in order:

1. Is the network cable in, at both ends? Phones get nudged.
2. Can anything else in the office reach the internet? If not, the phone is a symptom.
3. Unplug the phone’s power for ten seconds and plug it back in.
4. Still not registered after two minutes? Contact support.

The caller cannot hear me, or I cannot hear them

• Try the handset if you were on speaker, and vice versa — it separates a headset fault from a call fault.
• If it happens on every call, it is usually the network, and worth reporting with the time it started.
• If it happens on some calls, note the number and the time. That is what lets us find the call and see what happened.

Audio breaks up

Usually the office internet connection rather than the phone. Useful things to tell us: when it happens, whether it is every call, and whether anything else on the network is slow at the same time. We can look at the call itself from our side once we know roughly when it was.

Taking a phone home

Desk phones generally work from home on a normal broadband connection, and the handset does not need reconfiguring — it finds its way back.