5 features of your VoIP Phone

Making and receiving calls over the internet with VoIP is not only cheaper, if you're using a VoIP Deskphone or cordless solution, it'll also provide many features which aren't available on traditional PSTN handsets.

From knowing when your colleagues are on a call to being able to take a call from another ringing device, there are many advantages to using VoIP hardware. Here are a few of our favourites, all of which can be enabled from within your handset's settings:

BLFs (Busy Lamp Field)

A Busy Lamp Field is an easy, visual way to see if a colleague is available. It's especially useful when working from home or in large multi-level offices.

The lights next to each memory key will display as red when the VoIP User is on the phone and green when they are not.

Call Transfer

Call Transfer enables users to transfer an existing call to a third party. Used in conjunction with a memory key, giving you a quick way to pass the call to the right place.

There are two ways to transfer calls, Blind Transfer (also known as Cold Transfer) and Attended Transfer (Warm Transfer).

Using Blind Transfer means that the call is transferred without speaking to the person you're transferring to, useful when transferring to another department with an IVR. A downside of Blind Transfer is that if the person or department isn't available at that time, your caller would have to call back or leave a message.

As you've probably already guessed, Attended Transfer allows you to speak to the destination before transferring the call - using Attended Transfer gives the caller a much more professional experience; you can pass over information to your colleague, meaning the caller doesn't need to repeat themselves a second time.

Call Grab

When a call comes into a colleague, or if you have a sequential ring group, you can see BLFs flash when it's ringing - if you know that your workmate is away from their desk, you can 'Grab' the call by dialling "*20*" - If you assign this code to a memory key, it makes call grabbing easy.

Call Recording Toggle

If you have Inbound or Outbound Call Recording enabled on your number, you can pause the recording while your clients give payment details. All you need to do to halt the recording is press "555".

Once you've finished dealing with the sensitive data, all you need to do is press "555" again to continue, perfect for protecting data. This is another feature that can be assigned to a memory key for quick access.

Contact Directory

You can add contacts to your handset - this means that when a frequent caller gets in touch, you'll know who it is without having to memorise your client's numbers.

A .csv file with names and phone numbers can be bulk uploaded and will be live as soon as it's saved.

Updating Settings

All of these features need to be set up via your respective handset's Web Portal.

As long as you have a computer on the same network as the phone, you can access the web portal. All you need the the phone's IP address to log in. Depending on the phone type and brand, you can find the IP address by:

Yealink Deskphones: Clicking the 'OK' button.
Yealink DECT Phones: Clicking the 'OK' button, then selecting 'Status' and 'Base'.
Snom and Cisco Deskphones: Clicking 'Settings' then selecting 'Phone Information'.
Gigaset DECT Phones: Clicking the centre button, then 'Settings', 'System' and 'Local Network'.

Type the IP into a browser search bar; this will bring up the log in screen.

For Yealink & Cisco phones, the default Username and Password is admin, Gigaset phones have a default pin of 0000, and you'll need to create a user to access the Snom settings.

For more information about the settings you can amend, please see our Help Centre Guide