BVE Shared Line Appearance

Thank you. This sounds promising. 

Our current configuration has all phones in a simultaneous hunt group, so anyone can pick up the call, but only the station that put a call on hold can pick it up from hold. Calls directly to one of our phones are rare. Customers call a main number and the hunt group rings all stations.

I have follow-on questions.

1. Can SCA handle this situation (calls to a main number) or does it depend on calls being made to specific stations?
2. If it can, would converting to SCA mean we have to keep or de-configure this hunt group arrangement or does it matter at all?
3. Does Comcast tech support have enough knowledge of SCA to be able to tell if it will affect any of our other configuration settings? 
4. Will the screen on our phones (VVX 310) look the same to the station users as it does now? (Other station's name and on-hook/off-hook status on the BLF buttons)
5. What additional training will the station users need?
6. Will configuration by Comcast affect our ability to configure the system through the portal? We'll still want to change user/station names, call forwarding not reachable, etc).
7. If we implement SCA and find that there's some unintended consequence, can Comcast tech support easily roll us back to the previous configuration?
8. When you say you can have someone pick up the call, How do they pick up the call? Does the BLF show that the call is on hold (by blinking for instance)?

We only have 5 phones, so if we have to run around and reset phones or something that's not a big deal.

Hi efreitag_hs. 

1. Can SCA handle this situation (calls to a main number) or does it depend on calls being made to specific stations?

The Main Lin1. Can SCA handle this situation (calls to a main number) or does it depend on calls being made to specific stations? The Main Line cans still ring to a Hunt Group, but I would change the Hunt Group pattern from Simultaneous to Regular.

2. If it can, would converting to SCA mean we have to keep or de-configure this hunt group arrangement or does it matter at all?

Once the Hunt Group is changed to Regular Hunting, and the BLF appearances that I assume the customer has today are changed to SCA, the behavior is a call will come in and ring line 1 (all phones will ring because line 1 is using SCA to appear on all phones), if no one answers the call, then Line 2 will ring (once again, all phones will ring). This pattern will continue through all 5 lines, which happens to be the maximum number of SCA appearances that they can have on a Polycom 310 phone. The customer can through the Tech Admin Portal decide how many times to ring each line, using the Hunt Group settings.

3. Does Comcast tech support have enough knowledge of SCA to be able to tell if it will affect any of our other configuration settings?

SCA being set up on the phone should not affect any other configuration settings, other than the Hunt Group settings discussed above.

4. Will the screen on our phones (VVX 310) look the same to the station users as it does now?(Other station's name and on-hook/off-hook status on the BLF buttons)

SCA shows the other users Extension Number, BLF shows the users name.

5. What additional training will the station users need?

No addtional training is required, however we can schedule walk thru via phone once the feature is activated

6. Will configuration by Comcast affect our ability to configure the system through the portal? We'll still want to change user/station names, call forwarding not reachable, etc).

Nothing should change as far as Portal Capabilities other then SCA updates need to be done by Comcast, BLF updates can be done by the customer.

7. If we implement SCA and find that there's some unintended consequence, can Comcast tech support easily roll us back to the previous configuration?

All features can be deactivated by Comcast Technicians

8. When you say you can have someone pick up the call, How do they pick up the call? Does the BLF show that the call is on hold (by blinking for instance)?

When you use SCA, the call can be placed on hold, and all other users that have an SCA appearance of this line will see the line on hold, and will be able to pick up that call just by pressing that line appearance button.

Thanks for the responses, not every response directly addresses the question, so we're going to try a test with a subset of our phones. 

1. Can SCA handle this situation (calls to a main number) or does it depend on calls being made to specific stations? 

The Main Line cans still ring to a Hunt Group, but I would change the Hunt Group pattern from Simultaneous to Regular.

This sounds like we might wind up with 5 (phones) x 4 (rings per phone) = 20 rings before a call went to voicemail. We would like any call not answered in 4-5 rings to go to our daytime voicemail (currently station 1). After hours, we want any incoming call to go direct to our off-hours voicemail (currently station 2). 

2. If it can, would converting to SCA mean we have to keep or de-configure this hunt group arrangement or does it matter at all? 

Once the Hunt Group is changed to Regular Hunting, and the BLF appearances that I assume the customer has today are changed to SCA, the behavior is a call will come in and ring line 1 (all phones will ring because line 1 is using SCA to appear on all phones), if no one answers the call, then Line 2 will ring (once again, all phones will ring). This pattern will continue through all 5 lines, which happens to be the maximum number of SCA appearances that they can have on a Polycom 310 phone. The customer can through the Tech Admin Portal decide how many times to ring each line, using the Hunt Group settings.

We don't really want a sequential hunt, we'd like someone to pick up the phone as soon as possible. We're using the hunt group right now because we want all the phones to ring. We would just like to have a call to the main number ring all the phones up to 4-5 times, then go to voicemail for station 1. I was wondering if we still need a hunt group because the main number is not assigned to any particular station.

3. Does Comcast tech support have enough knowledge of SCA to be able to tell if it will affect any of our other configuration settings? 

SCA being set up on the phone should not affect any other configuration settings, other than the Hunt Group settings discussed above.

Thanks.

4. Will the screen on our phones (VVX 310) look the same to the station users as it does now?(Other station's name and on-hook/off-hook status on the BLF buttons)

SCA shows the other users Extension Number, BLF shows the users name.

Just to be clear, I understand that the answer to the question is "no". Non-SCA lets us show names ("Front Desk 1", "Front Desk 2", "Break Room", "Manager's Office") and non-SCA can only show extension numbers, right?

5. What additional training will the station users need?

No addtional training is required, however we can schedule walk thru via phone once the feature is activated

Thanks.

6. Will configuration by Comcast affect our ability to configure the system through the portal? We'll still want to change user/station names, call forwarding not reachable, etc).

Nothing should change as far as Portal Capabilities other then SCA updates need to be done by Comcast, BLF updates can be done by the customer.

But the answer to #4 above implies that we can't do anything with BLF.

7. If we implement SCA and find that there's some unintended consequence, can Comcast tech support easily roll us back to the previous configuration?

All features can be deactivated by Comcast Technicians

This is good, but can they easily restore the previous configuration?

8. When you say you can have someone pick up the call, How do they pick up the call? Does the BLF show that the call is on hold (by blinking for instance)? 

When you use SCA, the call can be placed on hold, and all other users that have an SCA appearance of this line will see the line on hold, and will be able to pick up that call just by pressing that line appearance button.

This sounds perfect, but can you clarify what you mean "users ... will see the line on hold". What do they see exactly?

Hi efreitag_hs.  If you will send me a private message with your contact information and I will engage our BVE resource to assist you directly with resolution of the these questions.

Thank You

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