Foxhall Solutions recently installed a Yeastar S20 VoIP phone system for a local Precision Engineering company (after BT got to their business park at long last and upgraded their cabinet to Fibre broadband).

This allowed us to reduce the number of BT lines they have down to just one –  and provide a flexible approach to how they make and take calls. Due to the ‘manufacturing’ nature of the site, there are staff working milling machines on a noisy production floor. This provided some ‘interesting’ features that we had to replicate from the old Panasonic PBX system we were replacing.

Staff are often away from their phones, so there needed to be a way to ‘Park’ a call and alert the staff member that there was a call waiting for them. We also needed a way for people on the production floor to actually hear the phones ringing over the sound of busy lathes and milling machines.

Algo_8186_PAWe combined the features of the Yeastar S20 phone system, and the Fanvil X4 phone-set, with a new product, the 110dB Algo 8186 ‘Paging Speaker’. This Paging Speaker was mounted up high on a wall at one end of the factory floor and simply needed to be cabled back to the network like any other phone on the system. It was set up with a ‘paging’ number, and a ‘ringing’ extension number and replaced an entire ‘black-box’ PA system under a desk feeding an old horn-speaker mounted up on the rafters.

When a call comes into the company, it rings on all phones – including the Algo speaker – and can be answered at any extension phone. If somebody needs to be tracked down for the caller, the call can be parked by pressing a button labelled ‘Park 1’. The ‘Park 1’ key then goes from green to red on all phones, to indicate it’s in use. Parking the call puts the caller on hold and releases the extension so another call can be made [using another labelled button] to a ‘Paging Group’ consisting of all the phones in the system – including the Algo PA speaker. The phones & PA all auto-answer and a request for “John Smith to take the call on Park 1” can be PA-broadcast across the company and production floor. John Smith then just needs to go to any phone and press the red-lit key labelled ‘Park 1’ to pick up that call.

We often make it possible to simplify a customer’s phone system when we install a VoIP IP-PBX and introduce new and easier ways to do things. But, in this case, we also had all the tools to replicate a well proven and familiar way to keep staff in contact with callers.

Get in touch with us at Foxhall Solutions, to talk about your phone system needs, and reduce your operation costs too! … 01787 228402