Managing Ring Groups + Auto Attendants

Watch our step-by-step video tutorial on managing your telephone system.

0:02 Welcome to the B1 Communications Trading Academy. Today’s video is for office managers, and we’ll be showing you how to manage ring groups and call cues, also known as departments or hunt groups.

0:15 To begin, let’s look at ring groups, which is located under the user tab. If you’re editing an existing ring group, you’ll want to scroll down and uncheck hide system users.

0:25 This is a useful feature to provide quick access to users, but you’ll need to see all some of the system features to get to the ring group.

0:33 Now let’s scroll back to the top and create a new ring group for this demonstration. You’ll need to name your ring group and provide a unique three-digit extension number.

0:43 We recommend using the 800 or 900 extension bank for system functions. Let’s call this ring group sales team and use extension 801.

0:53 Now you’re ready to add users to the sales team ring group. By selecting the green plus mark, you can add as many users as you’d like.

1:01 Let’s add 103, 106 and 105. You can also set up a delay for users. Let’s delay fill by 10 seconds, meaning calls won’t ring to his phone for the first 10 seconds.

1:15 Now there is one very important consideration when adding users. If you’d like to add the user’s mobile or web phone, you must add the letters Wp for web phone and M for mobile after their extension number.

1:30 For example, if fill at extension 105 was an advanced user with a web and mobile app that you want to ring, you would need to add 105wp and 105m for those devices.

1:44 The final step in creating ring group is an unanswered timeout. You can decide how long you want calls to ring, then route them to either a voicemail or perhaps an unavailable auto-attendant, giving customers a dial by name, directory or other options.

2:00 Now that we’ve created a ring group, which is the more simple version, let’s go to the more advanced option, call queues.

2:09 These are used to keep colours on hold with agents and advanced features, perfect for high-call volume environments. Now let’s go ahead and name our new call queue, customer service and use extension 850.

2:24 You’ll have to select the type of call queue you want to set up. Round robin directs calls to the agents that have been idled the longest, tiered round robin directs calls to the agents that have idled the longest with escalating tiers, bring all his self-explanatory and very popular.

2:42 Linear hunt allows you to prioritize which agents should get the call first, and linear cascade directs calls to groups of agents in a predefined order.

2:52 Call park is a hold function, and we recommend contacting customer support to set up this feature. For this demo we’ll be using linear hunt.

3:02 Now right off the bat there are several options available like call recording or stats. In pre-que options you can require agents to be online and available.

3:13 You have the option of selecting music on hold or ringing. You can set up the maximum wait times, queue links, and various other options like call back.

3:23 You can also forward calls to a voicemail or user if no agents are available or the queue is full. Let’s go to the in queue options.

3:33 I would recommend having unanswered calls go to voicemail. In setting this up you have two options. You can either select a destination and enter a user’s voicemail box like this.

3:45 You can select voicemail using the queue itself. This requires a few extra steps. Once we’ve created the queue you’ll then go back to the user tab.

3:58 Now you’re going to want to find the call queue you just created and enter the email address for the voicemail notifications.

4:05 Where would you like those voicemails to be sent for that specific queue? Once you’ve done that you’ll then want to go to the voicemail tab and set up the greeting.

4:16 And of course adjust the notifications to your preference. We recommend sending voicemails to the trash after they’ve been emailed to ensure that the voicemail box doesn’t get full.

4:30 Now let’s go back to the call queue and finish our setup. You’ll want to add agents to the call queue by selecting the edit agent icon on the right hand side.

4:42 We’ll add an agent. Let’s add fill as a user. Now unlike ring groups call queues will honour the answer rules established by fill, meaning if he has a web phone or mobile phone the call queue will include those devices.

4:56 You’re also able to add phone for an external telephone number. If you scroll down you can select order in linear hunt for this agent’s priority and adjust accordingly.

5:08 You can save as many agents as you’d like. The next step is setting your music on hold. You can upload your own licensed music and add an introduction message played for all colours when they first join the call queue or you can add on hold messages.

5:24 Things like wait time status and a custom message like thank you for holding. You can add as many marketing messages as you’d like and modify the time between each message.