Special Information About Attendant Consoles

Special Information About

Attendant Consoles

When the MERLIN system is installed, your attendant consoles come with features that are convenient for most businesses. The Attendant's Guide: Models 1030 and 3070 with Feature Module 1 shows these initial features and describes how to use them as well as other features important for attendants. (You can also see the initial feature assignments on illustrations in the Appendix, Figures A-3and A-4.)Your at- tendant consoles serve you best, though, when they are customized to handle the calling patterns of your business. Procedures for line administration and feature pro- gramming are the same for attendant consoles as for the other voice terminals in your system, except that attendant consoles always have square line arrangement, even in pooled systems. Here are some tips that may help you set up your attendant consoles:

●Attendant consoles should be 34-button deluxe voice terminals to give the at- tendant the benefit of status lights beside every line and Intercom Auto Dial button.

●Attendants in systems with more than eight outside lines can benefit from an Attendant Intercom Selector to provide the requisite number of Intercom Auto Dial buttons.

●An Intercom Auto Dial button for every voice terminal in your business that receives frequent calls is helpful to an attendant. These buttons also tell the at- tendant who is busy on the voice terminal — useful information for anyone screen- ing incoming calls.

●You probably want attendant lines to ring immediately when a call comes in, but there may be exceptions. For example, some people may want their per- sonal lines to ring at the attendant console only if they are not available to answer. In fact, some people may not want their personal lines to appear on the atten- dant console at all.

●If you have more than one attendant, you can assign delayed ring to lines on one attendant console as a backup for the other, and vice-versa.

●Set any lines an attendant is not responsible for answering to no ring.

●When an attendant transfers a call, it automatically returns to the attendant con- sole if no one answers it. However, the attendant needs a Cover button for any voice terminal with lines that have been removed from the attendant console, but must be covered if no one answers. A Cover button is also necessary if the attendant is expected to cover intercom or transferred calls for anyone.

●A loudspeaker paging system makes it easy for an attendant to transfer calls to people who are not always at the same location. And you can set it up so the attendant can page three separate zones independently from one another. For example, a paging system in a medical group shared by several doctors could be set up with one zone covering only those locations specific to a particular doctor, such as a consulting office, lab, and examining room. The same could be done for other people in the group. Then, when a call comes in, the atten- dant can park the call and page the person it’s for without bothering anyone else.