Cisco IP Phone: A Primer

Phones

Many people across campus have VoIP phones. The various phones (and some corresponding documentation) are:

Getting a Phone

• If you don't have a phone, you might want to request one. (If a phone is at your desk but isn't set up for you personally, you can use the same form to have it set up. Supplying the hostname/MAC address of that phone might help speed things up.) If you'd like more detail on onboarding/offboarding, we have it.
• Phones are automatically set up to be able to call out to campus, locally, long-distance, or internationally depending on business needs. You can request to have the calling restriction changed. Normal business costs for these calls are included in your department's annual telecommunication charges. Individuals or departments with frequent above average expenditures may be asked to cover those costs.
• If you have a phone, you'll want to update your entry in the UWRF directory.
• If you have a voice mailbox, you'll want to set it up with greetings. Here are some greeting scripts. As part of setting up your voice mailbox, you'll want to change your voicemail PIN.

Voicemail

• Most first line (personal number) voice mailboxes are integrated with people's Office 365 Outlook account. That means you can process voicemail either through your email inbox or using your campus phone. The messages are synched which means if, for example, you delete the message using your phone, the message is also deleted in your Outlook inbox. Old voicemail messages are "expired" automatically after a while.
• Other lines, like department lines, handle voicemail messages differently. If that line has voicemail, either the messages stay in the voicemail system or get relayed to an email address - not both (and therefore are not synched). If more than one person has the ability to process voicemail messages, you'll want to have a system/agreement in place to make sure that the voicemail messages are processed efficiently.

Portals

There are two portals that might make your life easier.

• The Self-Care Portal which is used to manage your phone.
• The Personal Communication Assistant which is used to manage your voice mailbox (including changing your PIN in case you forget it). You can also listen to your voicemail messages here. In fact, you can listen to your voicemail messages using any touch-tone capable phone.

Other Items of Interest

(If you think any of these would help you or your department, feel free to request it.)

• Some people can log into phones across campus to make/receive calls as though they were using their own desk phone. These people are extension mobility users. If you are one of these people, you can use the Self-Care Portal to reset your Extension Mobility PIN.
• Some departments are set up so that a department line rings on phones one group after another (after a certain period of time) or all phones at the same time. This functionality is known as hunt groups. Some people automatically are part of a hunt group; others have to log in and out of hunt groups depending on how the call flow was designed.
• Some departments are set up so that the caller can push a button to get to a particular individual (press 1 for Al; press 2 for Betty, for example). This is done through what is known as call handlers.
• You can work hands-free. Request a headset, if you need one.