Hot Desking a Regular Extension

VitalPBX
1

Is it possible to designate a regular extension that already has a device assigned to it as a hot desking extension?

The situation we have is that an employee may be covering the front desk temporarily. They would like to log in to a hot desking phone at the front desk. They would like their desk phone to be always logged in, so they don’t forget to log into it when they return to their normal desk.

2

To answer your question, yes. You can click on the “Unlink Device” button at the bottom left.

With that being said, I strongly discourage this type of implementation. Front desk extensions should always be a queue, that way other users can cover front desk calls by simply logging into the queue.
If you have a situation where users are redialing the front desk’s personal extension, then you can simply change the caller ID on the extension to the queue number.

3

Alright, I see the ‘remove device’ button, is that the same thing?
If I remove all the devices from an extension, is there any way to add a device back on?
I’m not sure that removing devices is what I want to do.

I am interested in your opinion, so please bear with me as I add some more context.

Our business is kind of unusual in that we have a policy that every caller will talk to a human when they call in. We don’t use an IVR as the first thing a caller hears.

Our operators (1000, 1001, 1002) are all in a queue.

Alice (1000) is the main operator, and she sits at the front desk reception area.
Bea (1001) works in the research department.
Catie (1002) works in finance.

When Alice goes on break, someone needs to be physically present at the front desk reception area to handle walk in clients.

There is a second smaller desk at the reception area that Bea and Catie can sit at when they are covering. They would like to log in to their extension (1001,1002) at that location, so they don’t miss any direct calls to their number and can place calls as themselves. The ‘hot desk’ area at the reception doesn’t need to be logged in or ring when nobody is sitting there. They may go days without having to cover for Alice, so they don’t want to have to log in to their own extension at their normal desk.

So, that’s where I’m coming from. What do you think would be ideal in your opinion?

4

Here are a couple of alternatives:

  • Set up a BLF to divert all calls from 1001 and 1002 to 1000. Before covering the front desk, they can press that BLF key to do the diversion.
  • Set up a BLF in the front-desk device to pick up calls from 1001 and 1002. So, when someone calls those extensions, they will be able to pick up the calls from the front-desk phone.
  • Set up the Follow-me feature for those extensions. If they don’t answer after a certain time, the call will be diverted to the front-desk phone.

I hope this helps.

5

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.