AT&T 206, 820 Special Information for the System Attendant, Ringing Patterns, Transferring Calls

Special Information for the System Attendant

Many businesses have a system attendant, a person who answers most calls and passes them along to other people in the office. An attendant can also take messages and place outside calls.

The main attendant voice terminal (0 or 10) also serves as an administration voice terminal. For administrative purposes, it is important that all lines appear on this phone, so do not remove lines from voice terminal 0 or 10. Also, the administrator/attendant voice terminal should have complete Intercom Auto Dial capability-one button with lights for each telephone in the system.

The system attendant-or receptionist-has responsibility for making the MERLIN system work effectively for the people in your office. The attendant voice terminal, therefore, has a Send Message button to let people know they have a message waiting, and an Intercom Auto Dial button (with a green light that tells when some- one’s phone is busy) for each person in the system.

If your business has an attendant, make sure he or she has the information on the following pages.

RINGING PATTERNS

All the telephones in the office, including the attendant’s, come pre-set to ring immediately on all incoming calls. Therefore, if all calls should ring on all phones, no programming would be necessary. Since the attendant answers most of the calls that come into the office, however, it is probably best to have other phones pro- grammed either to no ring or delayed ring.

For example, some businesses have one attendant and no backup, so that if the attendant is away from the desk, there is no one to answer calls. If this is your situation, set all the other phones in the office to delayed ring, so that when the attendant is away, calls will automatically be forwarded to the other phones in the office.

On the other hand, if you do have someone to cover, you’ll want calls to be routed to that person and not go through to any other phones in the office. Program the phone of the backup person to delayed ring and program all other phones in the office to no

ring.

The programming procedure is so simple that you or the attendant can change call coverage and ringing patterns on an as-needed basis. For example, if the usual backup person is taking the afternoon off, it’s a simple matter to reprogram his or her phone to no ring and program someone else’s phone to delayed ring for the after- noon. The point is that you don’t want to think of programming as carved in stone. It is flexible and easily changed. For details, see User’s Guide: Models 206,410, and 820 with Feature Package 2.

TRANSFERRING CALLS

Since the attendant normally answers all calls in the office, those calls must be passed onto the proper individuals.

There are three ways to transfer calls:

1.Directly.This is the quickest and simplest way of transferring a call. Simply,

•touch Transfer

•touch the Intercom Auto Dial button for the person to whom the call is being transferred (or dial the intercom number)

•hang up.

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