The Services functions allow the user to forward or open/busy-off some or all lines. Line capacities may also be set. When a busy or forward status is set on one or more groups of lines then Services icon on the info pane control bar changes to reflect the status.
Setting a service to Busy
If a service is set to Busy then all of the lines that form that service will appear to external callers as though they are engaged. Busy mode stops any calls arriving in the PhoneBOX system.
To set a service to Busy:
- Click on the Services tab in the bottom right of the screen (default location)
- All available services are listed
- Click on the service you wish to busy-off
- The relevant row in the services table goes red and a menu appears
- Choose Busy
- The Services icon on the info pane control bar changes from green to red, and the line numbers of the lines forming the relevant Service all change to read ‘X’.
The above example shows that the Test services have been closed, and all related Phone In lines have ‘X’ marked against them. It is possible to limit this control so that some lines can never be closed by a client.
For some services though this is very useful so that callers receive busy straight away if they try and call out of the operational hours of a particular phone in, the caller does not get charged for the call when they receive a busy tone.
Forwarding a Service
All of the calls for a specific Service may be forwarded to another phone number. This facility is designed for customers that wish to forward lines to voicemail (see Call Recording earlier in this manual), or perhaps to another site.
To forward a service:
- Click on the Services tab in the bottom right of the screen (default location)
- All available services are listed
- Click on the service you wish to Forward
- The relevant row in the services table turns blue and a menu appears
- Choose Forward
- A dialogue box appears where you may enter the phone number you wish to forward to
- Click OK
- The line numbers of the lines forming the relevant Service all change to show a ‘>’ symbol on each
To check what number services are being forwarded to, go back into services and it will state ‘Forwarded to xxxxxxxxxx’ in there.
Service Call Capacity
The Service Call Capacity facility allows you to limit how many calls are allowed to be present in a Service simultaneously. This is useful where a limited number of ‘real lines’ are shared between two stations. If for example you had 8 real lines, and two stations, AM and FM, you can control here how many calls each station was allowed to receive. It might be that you wanted to receive up to 6 calls during the morning period on the FM service, and only 2 on the AM service, but later in the day you may want to receive equal numbers to each service. The Service Call Capacity facility allows users with limited line resources to make the best use of their line capacity. See below:
In the above example we assume there are 7 real lines. The Phone In may receive up to 6 calls and the XD (ex-directory private studio telephone) may receive one call only. As there are 7 real lines and these have been allocated between the one full service and the one mini service (mini service is a service not used for full phone ins and can only be 1 or 2 lines), there is no danger that any Service will overflow and take all of the 7 lines.
If on the other hand a first come, first served system was required, each of the Services could be set to the number of real lines connected to the system. In this case, calls for either Service would be allowed through until all 7 real lines had been used. At this point, additional calls for any Service would result in a busy tone.
To set a capacity for a Service:
- Click on the Services button the info pane control bar
- All available services are listed
- Click on the service you wish to set the capacity of
- The relevant row in the services table goes red and a menu appears
- Choose Max Calls In
- Click on the maximum number of calls you wish to allow for this Service
Re-opening a Service
The Open facility is used to cancel a Busy or Forward mode set on a Service. To Open a service follow this procedure:
- Click on the Services button on the info pane control bar
- All available services are listed
- Click on the service you wish to Open
- The relevant row in the services table goes red and a menu appears
- Choose Open
- The line numbers reappear for the lines forming that service.
Note: Your system administrator may prevent changes to certain services.