The transition from hard phones to softphones has many advantages, such as freedom from being tied to a single location and space. However, there are some differences in how they function.
What Are Softphones?
Softphones are applications that run on your computer or cell phone that allow you to make and receive phone calls to your Cal Poly extension.
What Are Some of the Main Differences?
Each staff is issued a softphone extension. This extension is for their personal use and cannot be shared.
Staff will be able to answer shared lines but since you don't have a phone set or button to flash accessing them will be different.
5-digit dialing is still available so dialing any on-campus number is 6xxxx.
If you are dialing off campus you must still dial 7 to get out to the world so 71xxxxxxx.
Your voicemail box and access are the same, however, you will need to call into voicemail (66245) to retrieve messages as you no longer have a device with a light to notify you of messages.
New Standard
Users will recieve email notification of voicemail by default when given a softphone, making voicemail much more convenient.
How Have Hunt Groups Changed?
In the world of hard phones, hunt groups allowed users to answer a shared phone line (like main office number) by having a button on their phone that flashed or rang depending on need of the department allowing anyone with that appearance to answer a call to that shared extension.
Softphones do not have devices or buttons so that functionality is changed, instead each person's extension is added to the hunt group itself and then it will ring on the phone just like any call except it will have a note on the LED screen saying that it is via the Hunt Group line.
By default, all Hunt Groups will be cascade, meaning that all phones will ring when there is a call.
Sequential hunt groups will be by department request only as it will only ring a single phone line not everyone, so it is not apparent when a user is answering a hunt group call or a direct dial to their extension.
Unfortunately, one of the challenges is that all phones will ring when there is a call to a Hunt group and there is not an escalation for managers/supervisors though they can see that it is a Hunt Group call on their soft phone and just refuse it.
Can I Still Utilize Appearances WIth My Softphone?
On a hard phone, many users had appearances for office mates and other staff to be able to answer those phones when the staff was unavailable, this isn't possible on a softphone for personal lines. You can see a person's status by adding them as a contact from the top right section of the Home window in MiCollab.
