Frequently Asked Questions:

1.) What is the difference between an analog station and a digital station?
Your voice normally travels in a wave form. Digital phones contain a microchip called a DSP that converts that wave to 1's and 0's and transmits it to the KSU where a second microchip converts it back to a wave form and sends it across the phone company's telephone line. This allows additional information to be packeted with your call. This is how a phone system offers you so many features that you cannot get on an analog phone. Analog phone's simply pass the wave form along. Phones in your house are a good example of an analog phone.

2.) If I have more than 1 phone line how can I make calls go to other lines when my first line is busy?
This is a feature from your telephone company called Hunting. If you have several lines and one main number the phone company can put your lines in a hunt group. If line 1 is busy the next inbound call hunts to an available line. Once all of your lines are in use the next inbound caller will hear a busy signal.

3.) Can I have callers go into the voicemail/auto attendant if all of my lines are busy?
No. If your lines are all in use there is no pathway into your voicemail. The next person that calls your main number will hear a busy signal.

4.) What is a voice mail/auto-attendant?
A voice mail is a device that allows callers to leave messages for your employee's. These messages are left in mailboxes (essentially a storage bin). An auto-attendant is usually a component of the voice mail system. It allows you to record a message in order to help direct callers to extensions, mailboxes, or departments.

5.) What is a port?
A Port is a physical interface between a device and the phone system. You can have different types of port. For example a trunk port is where you would connect one of your telephone lines, a digital port is where you would connect a digital phone and an analog port is where you would connect an analog phone.
Standard notation for describing a phone system would be:
Trunk Ports X Digital Station Ports X Analog Station Ports
A 4x8x2 system could have up to 4 outside lines, up to 8 digital phones and up to 2 analog phones.

6.) What is a station?
A station is an analog or digital telephone

7.) What is a trunk?
A trunk is a Telephone Line from the phone company

8.) What is a POTS line?
A POTS line (Plain Old Telephone Service) is a term used to describe a basic telephone line from the telephone company.

9.) Can I transfer callers to a phone number outside of my office?
Yes. There are several ways this can be accomplished. Calls can be manually transferred to outside numbers by making an unsupervised conference call. A call comes into your office, you place that caller on hold and select another line, call the off-premise number and connect the two lines. A voice mail/auto-attendant can usually be set up to automate this process. The drawback to this method is that two of your telephone lines are tied up while the conversation is occurring.

The recommended method to do this uses a feature from the telephone company called off-premise transfer, centrex transfer, or third party transfer. This feature allows you to transfer the inbound caller back out on the same line they called in on, thus removing that call from your phone line. This can also be automated by a voice mail/auto-attendant in most cases.

10.) What is a KSU?
K.S.U. is an acronym for Key Service Unit. It is essentially cabinet containing all of the equipment that makes your phone system operate.

11.) What is a DSP?
D.S.P. is an acronym for Digital Signal Processor it is a chip that takes a sample of an analog wave and converts it to 1's and 0's using algorithms.

12.) What does X-Hours mean when referring to voice mails?
This refers to the number of storage hours the voice mail has. A 4-Hour voice mail can store roughly 4 hours of messages before it is full. In actuality most voice mails have a little less storage than actually listed. This is because system prompts and greetings use up some of that space.

13.) What does X-Ports mean when referring to voice mails?
This refers to the number of pathways into your voice mail/auto-attendant.
A 2-Port voice mail will allow 2 people in the voice mail at one time. These people may be leaving messages, retrieving messages, listening to the auto attendant, etc. If all of the ports are in use the next person trying to access the voice mail usually hears ringing until a port is free