Welcome back to Phone.com University! For the month of December, we are going to cover several home office setup scenarios to get your business up and running.  These scenarios include:

• How to setup your Communicator software to place and receive calls on your computer.
• How to change your outbound caller ID.
• Setting up schedules for your office hours.
• How to forward calls to multiple devices so you can be contacted wherever you are.

Today, we are going to cover how to set up your Communicator soft phone. This is a great program that provides the ability to place and receive calls, send and receive SMS messages, access your address book and voicemails on your Windows or Mac computer.

In order to use this software, you will want to verify that you meet the minimum system requirements at the link below:

http://www.phone.com/features/communicator_download.php#requirements

1. To begin, you need to make a communicator extension on your account. To do so, go to “Configure” at the top of your page, then select “Add A User/Extension.” On the extension type listing, select Communicator(1), then select the agreement checkbox(2) and press the orange “Add Communicator(3)” button. You will then be guided through the check out process to complete your oder.

2. Once your Communicator order is complete, you then need to get your login information and a link to download Communicator. To access this, select “Configure” at the top of your page and then choose “Manage Users/Extensions.” On the “Manage Extensions” page, click the “Edit” box next to to your newly created Communicator extension.

3. You are now on your extension settings page where you will see a picture of a laptop on the right. Under that picture, select “View Login Info(1)” which will provide you with your username and password to sign into Communicator. You will also want to click the “Download Communicator(2)” link which will take you to a page to download the software.

4. Once you have your Communicator installed, open it and sign in with the username and password that was provided in your extension settings. I would recommend checking the “remember details” button so you only have to enter your password once. After signing in, you will be prompted with the dashboard below.

5. To place a call, simple enter your number in the dialog box(1) and press Call. You can also check any received voicemails or SMS on your extension by clicking the “Messages(2)” tab.

That’s all there is to it!  You can now make outbound calls from your Communicator. In order to receive calls, you just need to set up some call forwarding rules that points to your Communicator extension. It’s just like setting up call forwarding to a cell phone, except you list your extension number instead of your cell number. Any questions about this? Feel free to ask! Be sure to check out the video below for a walk-through on what we covered today.

Tune in next Monday where we will cover how to change your outbound Caller ID!

When using the Phone.com service in a small business setting, the users more often than not will use our IP Phones. However, most small businesses do not have an alternate Internet solution since the Internet is usually reliable.  This begs the question of “What is your contingency plan when your Internet connection fails?”

It is also a common misconception for people to think they must have Internet service to receive and place calls with their Phone.com service..  This actually happens to be only partially true. Yes your IP Phone must have a working Internet connection in order to place or receive calls however, you can set up the Phone.com system to detect when your Internet is offline and simply route calls to your cell phone instead.   Now, in the event that your office is flooded or your Internet connection is down, you can still run your business without interruption.

Let’s first talk about how this works with inbound calls.  In your call handling rules associated with the extension you can set up the following (see the image below). The idea is to include in the same rule an alternate call destination such as your cell phone number. When your IP phone is offline, our system will initially try to call it and when no one answers, it will forward to the cell phone. However, after some time Phone.com will realize that the IP phone is unreachable and will immediately call your cell phone. That is until your IP phone is back online.

As for the outbound calling, you can use your cell phone as well to place Phone.com calls. You do need to make sure the caller ID on the outbound call displays your business number as opposed to your cell number.  To achieve this you will need to install the FREE Phone.com Mobile Office app on your smart phone (iPhone or Android). Once installed you can use the app to place calls from your cell phone.  From the settings in the app you can configure the caller ID you wish to display.

Our app allows you to do so much more than that.  It includes access to your voicemail, faxes and even SMS (TEXT) messages that were sent to your Phone.com number and extension.

To learn more about the Phone.com Mobile Office click here.

Welcome back to our final Phone.com University course for the month of November, where we’ll be wrapping up the small business setup. If you missed us over the last few weeks, we went over adding a greeting, creating a menu, and finally setting up a queue. The final step in this whole process is to forward your number to your menu to start receiving calls from your customers!

You should have a number already added to your account that you want to forward to your newly created menu.  If not, you can add one by going to “Configure” then select “Add A Number.”

1. Let’s begin by logging into your account.  From there, proceed to “Configure” at the top of the page and then select “Manage Numbers” on the left. Click the edit box next to your phone.com number to proceed.

2. Next, on the “Edit Number” page, click the edit box next to “Number Action” to get to your call handling rules.

3. This will take you to the “Call Handling Rules” page for your number. To start forwarding to your menu, all you have to do is change field 2A from “Select Operation” to “Goto Menu (1)”, select your created menu on the right(2), then press “Save Changes(3)” on the right.

It’s as easy as that! Now, when people call your Phone.com number, they will automatically be directed to your menu system which will play your automated greeting that you previously configured. Be sure to check out the video below for a walk through on how to accomplish what we covered above.

Tune back in next Monday for the start of our December theme where we’ll cover common home office setups!