We’re constantly enhancing RingCentral Office to better meet the needs of business users. Our latest software release – the rollout of which should now be complete – includes two features that could be very useful in certain office environments.
Simply put, Shared Lines enables a direct number (a.k.a. a DigitalLine) to be shared among different desk phones. (Right now, only Polycom desk phones are supported – the softphone and the mobile apps will not work with Shared Lines. That said, we’d like to expand line sharing to other devices in the future.)
The phones sharing a line comprise what’s known as a Shared Line Group – it works just like a department in your phone system. (In fact, departments have been renamed Groups. The “department” equivalent is now a “Call Queue Group”.)
The second new feature is Paging. It will work on all RingCentral-provisioned desk phones, as well as CyberData V2 speakers/amplifiers (which can be bought from third-party retailers).
You’ve no doubt heard paging in action before – in the supermarket, for example, when someone makes an announcement on the PA system. RingCentral Paging lets Office users make one-way pages to another user’s desk phone. (The RingCentral mobile apps can make outbound pages over VoIP, but cannot accept incoming ones.)
Obviously Paging introduces the possibility for chaos: imagine a sudden voice message coming from your desk phone with no forewarning. But inbound Paging can be turned on or off on a per-phone basis:
Both Shared Lines and Paging are included in all US Office plans at no extra charge.
To learn more about what’s included in Office, visit the RingCentral Office Features page.
