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.

6.0.1 The first of these is Shared Lines. What does this feature do?

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”.)

2014-02-11_12-12-03 When someone calls the number that is shared within a Shared Line Group, all of the phones sharing that line will ring – greatly lessening the chance that calls will go unanswered. Plus, shared-line calls can be placed on hold and then picked up by someone else within the group, eliminating the need for transfers.

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:

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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.