Business Call Manager (BCM)

Business Call Manager (BCM) enables you to configure and manage your incoming and call forwarding services on a single screen.

• Setting Your Availability
• Incoming Call Settings
• Configuring Advanced Settings
• Selecting Forwarding Numbers and Creating Caller Lists

Setting Your Availability

You can use the drop-down at the top left of the screen to set your status to either Available for Calls or Do Not Disturb.

Configuring availability

Use your mouse to select your status.

If you select Do Not Disturb:

• the lozenge turns red
• your incoming calls will usually be diverted to voicemail.
• if you have also turned on Busy Call Forwarding, you will see a warning icon – when you click on this, you will see a pop-up explaining that calls will be forwarded to the Busy Call Forwarding number. You can click a link to deactivate this service if you want calls to either be rejected or, if you have a voicemail service, sent to voicemail.

Do Not Disturb

 

Incoming Call Settings

In the central panel, you can configure your Incoming Call Settings.

You have a number of options on the Incoming Call Settings panel. You can configure

• how your phones will ring when you receive a call
• how the call should be handled
  • if you do not answer after a specified time
  • if your line is busy.

Once you have made all your changes, you must click Apply to save them.

Configuring how your phone(s) will ring

Use the drop-down alongside Incoming calls will: to select one of the options.

If you select Ring your Account Phone, you will see a box with your account phone number in it. When you receive a call, this is the phone that will ring.

If you select Ring your phones in order, you will then be able to configure the order in which your different phones will ring.

In the following example, your account phone would ring first, then your mobile phone and the temporary number, and finally both the account and mobile phones would ring together.

Configuring ringing order

• You can optionally add more phones by clicking the empty panel and either selecting a phone number from a list of saved numbers, or manually entering a phone number. A new row will then be added.
• You can configure up to 6 ringing steps for each of your phones.
• You can change the length of ring for a step.
  • Hover over the timing column or over the marker along the top of the table.
  • Click and hold the handle that appears and drag left to right to change the length of ring.
  • The number indicator on the handle will indicate the current value.
• You can delete a phone from the table by hovering over the name/number field and clicking on the small cross that appears on the right of the name/number.
• When configuring these settings, you will see helpful pop-ups explaining the basics of what can be configured.

If you select Ring your phones together, all your phones will ring simultaneously when you receive a call. As on the Ring your phones in order option, you can add or delete the phones which will ring. Your phones will ring until you answer one of them, or until another call service kicks in, for example Delayed Call Forwarding, or until the call is rejected or sent to voicemail.

If you select Forward to another phone, you can configure the phone that should ring.

Forwarding incoming calls

 

• Click the link to enter the phone number.
• Tick the checkbox if you want to be notified when calls are forwarded.
• If you configure call forwarding here, incoming calls are no longer under Business Call Manager control, so your Delayed or Busy call forwarding settings will be disabled.
  
  

Call forwarding settings

You can also use the Phone Status panel to configure your Delayed and Busy call forwarding settings. If your system supports integrated call forwarding, any changes made here will automatically be replicated on any other devices associated with your CommPortal account.

Call Forwarding Settings

 

• Use the text box to type in the number of seconds that your phone should ring before it is either forwarded to another number or the call is rejected.
  • If you have configured a ringing order for your phones, you must ensure that this is longer than the total length of time set for the ringing sequence.
• Use the radio button to choose what should happen if you do not answer your phone within the configured time.
  • If you choose to forward the call, use the link to set or change the forwarding number.
  • If you do not have a voicemail service, Send to voicemail will read Reject Call.
• Use the radio button to choose what should happen if you are already on a call when another call comes in.

Configuring Advanced Settings

The panel on the right of the Business Call Manager screen includes icons for a number of advanced call services.

Advanced Settings panel

You can see the status of these call services at a glance:

• Clicking on a service turns it on and off.
  • Services that are active are shown in bold.
  • Services that are disabled are grayed out and have a slash through the icon.
• Services that are not active, or are active but are being overridden by another service have a warning icon.
  • Hover the cursor over the icon to see a pop-up that explains why a service is being fully or partially overridden.

Depending on which services you have, you can configure the following Call Services on this panel. For some of these services, you will create a list of callers whose calls will trigger the service or enter a call forwarding number.

Forward Selected.

• Click on forwarding list to configure the list of numbers whose calls you want to forward.
• Click the link on the phone number to set or change the number that calls from these callers will be forwarded to.

 Reject Selected.

• Click on rejection list to set up the numbers where calls should immediately be rejected.

Distinctive Ringtone

• Click on distinctive ringing list to enter any phone numbers which should ring your phone(s) with a different ringtone.

Forward if unavailable

• Click the link to set or change the number that calls will be forwarded to if your line is unavailable, for example because your phone is unplugged or has lost power.

Anonymous Callers

• When enabled, calls from an unknown number will be rejected without going to voicemail.

Selecting Forwarding Numbers and Creating Caller Lists

Many settings in Business Call Manager allow you to create a list of callers or enter a call forwarding number. The interface for doing this will be the same for each service that you are configuring.

Selecting Forwarding Numbers

Many BCM settings require you to click a link to enter a call forwarding number. You can create a single list of call forwarding numbers that can then be used every time you want to configure a service that uses one of these numbers. The first time you click on one of these links, you will see a pop-up explaining the benefits of creating this forwarding number list.

Select Forwarding Number

• 

  To add a number, enter the Number and Name in the input boxes, and click Add.
• To delete a number from the list, click x alongside the entry.
• When configuring a call forwarding service, either select the number in the list that you want to use or enter a temporary number, and then click OK.
  
  

Creating Caller Lists

Many BCM settings require you to create a list of callers to whom the call forwarding behavior will apply. You will create a different list for each call service but the method of compiling the lists is the same for all services.

Caller List example

 

• You can add someone to a list by typing their number in the input box and clicking Add New.
  • If you know someone is in your contact list, you can simply enter their name or number in this input box to search for them in your Contacts. BCM will display matches as they occur.
• You can delete a number by clicking the trash icon on the right, or select Clear List if you want to remove all the numbers currently on the list.
• You can also select people directly from your Contact or Extensions lists by clicking those links and ticking the checkbox(es) alongside the entries you want to include.
• You will see the warning icon if you add a caller to a list that would create interaction conflicts with other lists.
  • Click on the icon to see why there is an issue.
  • You can choose whether or not to resolve the issue, for example by deleting the contact from the conflicting list.  However, if you do not resolve it, then unexpected call handling behavior may occur.