Old office, new phone system ... stuck in our ways

[dwaxman]

I work in a medium size recruiting company and we recently upgraded phone systems due to a corporate takeover and we're very distressed about our phone system. We have a Merlin Legend version 7 I believe.

On our old system the operator would get a call, she could then press an extension auto-dial and see the person was on the phone. Then she hit a SVSHOST smartkey and she could speak to the extension (through the handset) without the caller on the other end hearing. The person could hit MUTE and speak back to the operator without their caller hearing as well. This worked great for us and we'd like to have a feature like that again.

From what I understand I can setup SYS-VOICE and the operator can push that, then the extension and the operators voice will come out of the speakerphone. The problem is the caller will hear this as well as the persons response to the operator. Am I correct with this?

Basically what we need, and we know we'll have to accept change, is a way for the operator to inform us whom is calling and for us to respond if we want to take the call WITHOUT our current caller knowing anything is happening.

Any options?

 

[jlshelton]

What you want can be achieved with the old-style ATL phones, which are supported by Legend 7. You have to devote two ATL ports to service one phone; that provides two separate talk paths to the phone, one for off-hook conversation, and the other for voice-announce and response. There is some programming required to do this, discussed in the Legend installation manual. Let me know if this is an option for you, and I can point you to the right sections of the manual.
In the ATL phone arrangement, the phone user needs to cover the handset mouthpiece, and speak at the phone itself. The outside party won't hear very much because of the two talk paths, but the announcement through the speaker may be heard a bit (via the handset microphone), and it's up to the user to cover the mike to prevent his talking back from being transmitted to the outside caller.

Another option, available on all phones, is to have the operator make announcements by ringing the phone user, who would be responsible for placing the outside call on hold and answering the inbound announcement. It's a little more work, but guarantees total privacy, no chance of overhearing.

If you have computers on desktops, you could use instant messaging to deliver a text-based announcement. Around our small office, we sometimes use Windows built-in "NET SEND" feature to send a quick text announcement to another user. It pops up on the screen, and phone conversations are not interrupted.