Extension Management Guide
By doing a little advanced planning on the extensions in your organization you can make your users more reachable and fully exploit the functionality of the MyOffice PBX Cloud PBX.
Extensions should be four digits and start with a 7
You will have the best success with extensions that are four digits long and start with a seven.
Many customers have extensions beginning with a '1' and would like to keep their extensions the same. The first concern with extensions beginning with a '1' is that they may conflict with your Attendant Menu. You may, for example, have the option on your Attendant Menu to: “Choose 1 for sales, 2 for customer service, etc.” Then, if the caller chooses '1,' we have to wait four seconds to see if they actually wanted '1' for sales, or if they hit '1' as part of an extension, '101.'
Some phones have internal digit mapping or hones that have a digitmap or some kind of internal dial-plan.
As soon as the caller dials the '1,' the phone expects you to dial 10 more digits with the next digit being a number between 1 and 9. So, as soon as you dial '10' on your way to dialing '101,' the phone will give you a fast-busy. Extensions that are four digits long give you the flexibility to designate the third digit (the digit in the 'hundred's place) to something specific, e.g. a voicemail box or cell phone.
Extensions for cell phones, voicemail boxes, and groups.
In order to send calls directly to a user's voicemail box, that voicemail box must have a direct dial extension.
To add an extension to a voicemail box, log into the MyOffice PBX Admin Portal and choose the Resources tab. Then, choose the Voicemail Boxes filter (little white box) at the top of the list to see all the voicemail boxes on the system. Give each voicemail box its own extension. You can do the same for cell phones. Create a new Resource of type "External Phone Number." Enter the external phone number, be it a cell phone, home phone or other frequently dialed external phone number. Save the number. Once it shows up in the list below, click on the number and assign it an extension. Similarly, groups and acd queues can be labelled by their own extensions. ACD Queues are found under the Apps tab of the admin portal. By adding these extensions, you can forward calls to a general queue or group, which would allow any member to answer.
Examples
For example, if the extension for the user is 7001, you can create an extension for their voicemail box that is 7701. Do the same for all extensions. Then, if you know someone's extension, just by changing the third digit to a '7' you then know the direct transfer extension for their voicemail box. You can also do this for cell phones. They could maybe be the '9' extension. Then, when finished you could have user Sue Smith be extension 7001 for her phone, 7701 for direct transfer to voicemail and 7901 to send calls to her cell phone.
