Settings

There are a number of screens within the CommPortal interface where you can configure the settings for your Pod Connect phone system.

• Personal Details and Security
• Call Settings
• Message Settings
• Notifications
• Reminders

Personal Details and Security

The bottom panel of the CommPortal UI displays information about your account and allows you to configure or change settings, including your password or PIN. You can also use this tab to configure a SIP desk phone.

Personal Details and Security settings

The page is divided into the following panels.

Personal Details

The Personal Details panel shows you information about your line:

• The name this line is configured as. Your administrator can change this if it is incorrect.
• The name of the department the line is in. If departments are not used in your business, this will say None.
• Whether you are an administrator, and if so, for which department.
  
  

Devices

The Devices panel shows you the phones and other devices that you currently have configured for your account. If you have a SIP desk phone, you can use the Devices panel to configure settings for it by clicking on set keys next to its number. This will launch the Phone Configurator.

Note that, if you have a business mobile phone associated with your account that you use alongside your desk phone, you cannot see any details of this business mobile in CommPortal.

Allocated Licenses

If you have any licenses for creating Large Meetings or Webinars, you will see the Allocated Licenses link that allows you to see what licenses are currently allocated to your line.

Security

The Security panel allows you to change your password, Call Services PIN or Voicemail PIN.

In some systems, passwords and PINs may be checked to ensure that they are strong enough to prevent a malicious user guessing your password. For example, you may be prevented from using your phone number, or having consecutive or repeated numbers and/or letters. If your chosen password fails these checks, it will be rejected and you will see an error message explaining why you cannot use it.

To change your CommPortal password, follow these steps:

1. Click the Change Password
2. Enter your current password in the Current password text box.
3. Enter your new password in the Password text box.
4. Enter your new password in the Confirm password text box.
5. Click on Confirm.

You have two different PINs.

1. Your Call Services PIN, which you use to access Remote Access to Call Forwarding and to validate changes to some call services.
2. Your Voicemail PIN, which you use to access your Voicemail.

To change either of these PINs, follow these steps:

1. Click the Change Call Services/Voicemail PIN
2. Enter the new PIN in the New PIN text box.
3. Click on Confirm.

If your service provider has enabled this setting, you can also use a Change Account Email link to edit your account email address. This address is used for

• notification emails that are sent every time your voicemail PIN, CommPortal password, or the email address is changed
• password reset emails that are sent if you click the forgotten password link on the CommPortal login screen.

Call Settings

The Call Settings screen allows you to configure your call service options.

Call Settings tab

 

The General panel enables you to configure call settings, including caller ID options.

The Call Forwarding panel lets you configure whether, when you dial the Call Forwarding access codes to enable Call Forwarding, you need to enter a phone number. If you don't want to enter a phone number then your Call Forwarding service will use the number you last configured through CommPortal.

To change whether you need to enter a number when enabling Call Forwarding from your handset, follow these steps:

• Check (to require a number to be entered) or uncheck (to mean a number is not required) the type of Call Forwarding you want to change.
• Click on Apply.

The Call Blocking panel lets you configure what types of outgoing calls should be blocked from your line:

To block certain types of call, follow these steps:

• Check the type of call you want to block.
• Click Apply.

To unblock a type of call, follow these steps:

• Uncheck the type of call you want to allow.
• Click Apply.

The remaining panels on this page relate to particular call features. You will only see these panels if you have access to these services.

Call Me Buttons

The Call Me Buttons panel allows you to enable or disable your Call Me service and to cancel your existing buttons. If you disable the buttons by un-checking the Enable Call Me Buttons checkbox, potential callers who attempt to call you, for example by using a Call Me button that you had already included in an email, will see a message stating that the service is not currently available.

You can permanently disable all of your existing Call Me Buttons by clicking on Cancel Existing Buttons. If you want to reactivate the Call Me service in future, you will need to recreate and redistribute your Call Me buttons.

Message Settings

The Message Settings screen lets you change the operation of your voice and fax messaging service, and has a series of sections.

Messages tab

 

• General lets you configure some general messaging settings.
• Mailbox Access lets you configure your voice mailbox.
• Voicemail Greeting lets you configure your default and alternative greetings.
  
  

General

You can use the General panel to do the following.

• Configure how many seconds must pass before incoming calls are forwarded to your voicemail.
• Enable or disable Live Message Screening, voicemail transcription or video messaging (if you have access to these features).
• Enable auto-forwarding of your voicemail messages by email. You can add destination e-mail addresses by clicking on the add an email address link.  You will then be able to manually add an address or choose from your existing contacts.

You can also choose whether you want to leave a copy of any forwarded messages or faxes in your inbox or whether they should be deleted.

Additionally, you can configure whether or not to include action links in the outgoing message.  Clicking on action links allows you to log in to your account, mark messages as read (deactivating any message waiting indicators), or even delete them. 

Once you have made any changes, you should click Apply to confirm your choices.

Mailbox Access

You can use the Mailbox Access panel to:

• configure your mailbox so that it does not require you to enter a PIN when you collect your messages
• configure your mailbox so that it logs you directly into your mailbox when you collect your messages
• configure your mailbox so that it automatically plays your new messages when you've logged in
• determine the content that is played back when you access your voicemail (the details, the message or both)
• determine the order that messages are played back in.

Once you have made any changes, you should click Apply to confirm your choices.

Voicemail Greeting

You can use the Voicemail Greeting panel to:

• select your default greeting
• specify when alternative greetings should be used and the behavior when a greeting expires
• record or upload additional audio greetings, for example greetings to be used out-of-hours or during an extended absence
• override your default greeting with a temporary greeting for a defined period of time.

Once you have made any changes, you should click Apply to confirm your choices.

Notifications

The Notifications tab allows you to set options for how you wish to receive notifications whenever a new message arrives for you.

Settings – Notifications tab

Message Waiting Indicator

The Notifications page automatically displays the MWI section where you can configure whether your phone should indicate to you when you have new messages of a particular type.

To have all new voice messages activate your phone's messages indicator, follow these steps:

1. Check All Voicemail.
2. Click on Apply.

To have only urgent new voice messages activate your phone's messages indicator, follow these steps:

1. Check Urgent Voicemail.
2. Click on Apply.
   
   

Email Notifications

Expand Email to configure Email notifications, which notify different email accounts when different sorts of messages are waiting.

Notification settings – Email tab

 

To add an email address to be notified, follow these steps:

1. Click on New Entry:
2. Enter the email address.
3. Click on Add.
4. Check whether you want All Faxes, Urgent Voicemail, or All Voicemail sent to this address.
5. Click on Apply.

To delete an email address from this list, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Cross icon to the right of the email address: .
2. Click on Apply.

To delete all email addresses from this list, follow these steps:

1. Click on Clear List.
2. Click on Apply.
   
   

Outdial Notifications

Expand Outdial to configure a telephone number that will be called whenever a new message arrives in your account. This is a telephone number that is not currently associated with your account.

Outdial Notifications

 

On this screen, you can:

• enable or disable the Outdial notifications by clicking the box on the left-hand side. When Outdial notifications are disabled, the rest of the screen will be grayed out and you will not be able to make any changes to the configuration without enabling Outdial notifications first.
• choose which events – Urgent Voicemails, All Voicemails – will trigger a notification to your chosen number
• enter or modify targets for notification types.

You can also

• configure a schedule containing periods when outdial notifications are sent – during inactive periods (for example overnight) any unheard message will still activate the MWI, but the outdial notification is postponed until the next active period in the schedule
• control the delay between receiving a message and sending out a notification
• control how many times, and at what interval, the system will retry a call if the notification is not acknowledged
• control what you have to do to acknowledge the notification: simply answer the outdial call, or proceed to access your voicemail. The second option prevents a notification being lost by an outdial call being picked up by an answering machine or by someone else.
  
  

Override Notifications

Expand Override to override the schedules that you have configured for your pager and outdial notifications and send notifications according to an override profile.

Notification settings – Override tab

 

Using the Override tab, you can

• enable or disable the override profile by clicking the box on the left-hand side. When the override profile is disabled, the rest of the screen will be grayed out and you will not be able to make any changes to the configuration without enabling the override profile first.
• determine what date the override profile will expire
• enter or modify targets for notifications
• choose which events – Urgent Voicemails or All Voicemails – will trigger a notification to your chosen number.

You can also

• configure a schedule containing periods when outdial notifications are sent – during inactive periods (for example overnight) any unheard message will still activate the MWI, but the outdial notification is postponed until the next active period in the schedule.
• control the delay between receiving a message and sending out a notification
• control how many times, and at what interval, the system will retry a call if the notification is not acknowledged
• control what you have to do to acknowledge the notification: simply answer the outdial call, or proceed to access their voicemail.  The second option prevents a notification being lost because the call was picked up by an answering machine or by someone else.

Reminders

The Reminders screen lets you set up reminder calls.

CommPortal Reminders page

Adding Reminders

To add a new reminder, click New Reminder at the top of the screen and then follow these steps.

1. Enter a description of the reminder.
2. Select the phone number on which you will receive the reminder call.
3. Select whether you want a one-off or recurring reminder using the drop-down.
4. Enter the date (for one-off reminders) and time you would like the reminder call using the Time boxes and dropdown list.
5. Click on Play/Record to record and then playback your reminder message.
6. Click on Add.
7. Click on Apply.
   
   

Deleting Reminders

To delete a reminder, you use the Reminders list:

• To delete a single reminder, follow these steps:
  1. Click on the trash icon to the right of the reminder in the list.
  2. Click on Apply.
• Alternatively to delete all of your reminder calls, follow these steps:
  1. Click on Clear List.
  2. Click on Apply.