With the dial pad you call customers and colleagues — for a skill or privately. myContactCenter treats a call for a skill like any other conversation of that skill.
The dial pad
You open the dial pad with Dial in the ribbon or with the Invoke Softphone keyboard shortcut. It contains:
- The phone number field. Type or paste a phone number — or a name: the Agent suggests matching entries from the address books, with Name, Number, Category and Description, and for colleagues with their presence. Enter or a click applies a suggestion; Shift+Enter, Ctrl+Enter or Shift+click dials it immediately.
- Skill and Language. Here you determine on whose behalf you are calling. The skills for which you accept calls and your languages are available, plus one entry each with the suffix [Private].
- Number to Display. The phone number the called party sees.
- Redial. The button shows the number dialed last; a click dials it again. The arrow next to it opens the last numbers of this session; a click on one of them dials immediately.
- Icons for pasting from the clipboard and clearing the field, plus Dial (red during a call, when it hangs up instead) and Call forwarding without consultation. If you point the mouse at the phone number field, at Dial, Redial or the forwarding icon, a tooltip explains how to use it.
The suggestion lists adapt to their content. If you drag a list larger or smaller with the mouse, the Agent remembers the size; Reset layout restores it.
Starting a call
- Click Dial.
- Enter the phone number or search for the contact.
- Choose Skill and Language — or the [Private] entries for a private call.
- Click the Dial icon or press Shift+Enter or Ctrl+Enter — also in the Skill or Language field.
Your own phone rings first. If Accept manual calls automatically is turned on — as it is initially —, the Agent accepts this call by itself. As soon as you are connected, the conversation shows Agent connected, and myContactCenter dials the number; you hear the ringback tone. When the called party picks up, it shows Connected. If the line is busy or no one answers, you hear the busy tone, and the call ends.
The skill and language you selected last are preselected; during a call, those of the current conversation. If you dial during a call, you start a consultation call.
For a skill or private
- You call for a skill if you have selected a skill and a language. The conversation is then called Manual outgoing call. It appears in the customer’s history, and depending on the skill, you classify it afterwards or it is recorded.
- You call privately if you have selected [Private] or nothing.
Calls for a skill require the Qualified conversations permission in your profile. Without it, the lists stay empty and you can only make private calls.
Which number the called party sees
The dial pad shows it under Number to Display before you dial. The administrator sets the number per skill and language; if there is no setting, the called party sees the contact center’s default number or your own. You cannot enter a different number.
With Suppress caller number under Settings › Special settings, the called party sees no number but “Anonymous” — provided your profile leaves the setting to you.
Entering phone numbers
Enter external numbers the way they are written — with “0” or “+” at the beginning. The Agent adds the digit for an outside line by itself.
- You can paste phone numbers from websites, emails or other programs unchanged: the Agent removes spaces, hyphens, slashes, parentheses and letters. What remains are the digits, a leading “+” as well as “*” and “#”.
- If the field contains “Name (Number)”, the Agent dials the number in parentheses.
- You dial colleagues’ extensions without an area code; the Agent also recognizes “12-34” as extension 1234.
- Codes of your phone system with “*” or “#” are kept, even in front of a phone number.
- If nothing diallable remains, the Agent reports No number given.
Other ways to dial
- Highlight and dial: Highlight a phone number in any program and press the keyboard shortcut. The number lands in the dial pad — with Highlight and dial immediately, it is dialed straight away. The Make qualified call and Make private call shortcuts also determine whether you call for a skill or privately. See Keyboard shortcuts.
- Links: Links with “tel:” or “callto:” — in the Browser module or in other programs — open the dial pad with the number. Such a link can also bring along the skill and language.
- Attached data: If a value in the Attached data module begins with “tel:”, it is clickable. The Agent then dials with the skill and language of the current conversation.
- Agents module: Double-clicking a colleague calls them.