Phones: Mitel vs. Cisco

[jneiberger]

I originally posted this in response to a post by MitelInMyBlood but the moderator deleted it for being off-topic.

In a separate thread, MitelInMyBlood mentioned that certain functions, such as transfer and conference, were easier on Mitel phones than on Cisco phones.

Can you elaborate on that? What about the Mitel phones makes this a simpler task?

Thanks,
John

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

Sorry, clarification is in order, I meant call conferencing.

The complexity arises when you have two individual calls on the instrument and wish to simply conference everyone together.

Example, you're on a call with a vendor and expecting your boss to call in from god knows where.
The boss calls, you answer, now you have two completely separate conversations you want to bring together as one.

On the Mitel set you simply press the "add held" key and then press the key of the held line; voila, everyone's together.

On the Cisco the process just seems cumbersome (to me) because you have first have to park one of the calls and then dial the call park number to get back to the one caller and have everyone conferenced together.

Because of this complexity we find more people choosing to use the conference bridge than ordinarily would and that's an issue when you're trying to "right-size" an expensive bridge.

Again, just my 2 cents worth, IMO Mitel got this one right, Cisco got it wrong (made it harder than it needed to be).

 

[jneiberger]

With regard to Cisco, that must be the old way of doing it. Recent releases provide a Join button. You simply select the two calls that you want to conference together and you hit the Join softkey.