Getting started with Birchills phone communicator

What is Birchills phone communicator?

Birchills phone communicator allows you to make and receive calls directly from within your web browser, without the need for any additional browser plugins, addons, or downloads. It users a new browser standard called WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) which is supported in most modern web browsers. You can find out more about which browsers are supported here.

To access communicator please click on the icon in the top right of your portal

Exploring Communicator

This is the Communicator's main view. On the left-hand side we have a list of all extensions on the account, as well as the company phone book. On the right-hand side we have a log of your extension's recent calls. In the centre is the dialler.

In the list of extensions on the left-hand side, you'll notice that they have small coloured indicators next to them. These essentially act as Busy Lamp Fields (BLFs) which just means that they indicate whether or not that person is on a call. There are a few different states that they can be in, which are as follows.

Solid green - The extension isn't on a call and isn't ringing
Flashing red - The extension is ringing
Solid red - The extension is on a call
Grey - The extension's status is unknown

Using Communicator

Let's say you'd like to use Communicator to call Adam. You can do that in one of the following ways:

Click Adam's name from the list on the left
Dial Adam's number in the dialler and press the green Call button.
Search for Adam in the search box above the dialler and either click his name, or use your arrow keys to select him and press Enter to dial.

Once you've started a call with Adam, you'll see a few more buttons appear.

Fom left to right, the buttons in the black bar are as follows:

Mute - Mute the call so they cannot hear you, but you can still hear them
Volume - Change the volume of the call
Hold - Place the call on hold, or remove the call from hold
Dialler - Show the dialler so you can press keys during the call
Transfer - Initiate a transfer of the call to another extension

Just below these buttons you will see a list of all of your ongoing calls, along with a Plus button that will allow you to place the current call on hold and start another call.

Transferring a Call

Let's say we receive an incoming call from Dan and, after speaking to him, we discover that he'd like to be transferred to Adam. We now have two options of how to transfer the call; blind transfer or attended transfer.

If we were to do a blind transfer we would just send Dan's call directly to Adam without speaking to Adam first. An attended transfer, on the other hand, lets us speak to Adam first to make sure he wants to accept the call and, if he does, we then transfer Dan straight through.

Blind Transfer

Performing a blind transfer is very simple. While speaking to Dan we first press the Transfer button, which will light up to indicate we're initiating a transfer. Then, we can either key in Adam's extension number (101) and press transfer, or just click on his name on the left-hand side. Adam's phone will start ringing and the call will disappear from Communicator as it has been successfully transferred.

Attended Transfer

Performing an attended transfer involves a few more steps, but it has the added benefit of allowing you to speak to the person you'd like to transfer the call to first to ascertain whether or not they'd like to accept the call.

To perform an attended transfer, we first need to start a new call to Adam, which we can do by just clicking his name in the extension list on the left. This will place Dan on hold and immediately start dialling Adam.

Once Adam answers, we can ask if he'd like to take the call. If he wouldn't, we can just end our call with him, and go back to speaking to Dan as normal by clicking his name in the Ongoing Calls list at the bottom. If, on the other hand, Adam would like to take the call, then we transfer Dan through to him.

To do this, we just need to press the Transfer button, which will light up to show that we've initiated a transfer, and press the new green Transfer button that has appeared next to Dan's name in the Ongoing Calls list at the bottom to transfer the call. Dan will immediately be speaking to Adam and the call will disappear from Communicator as it has been successfully transferred.

Switching Extension

If the user you're logged in as has access to multiple extensions, you're able to switch between which extension you're using using the dropdown menu on the right-hand side of the search bar at the top. Once you've switched to another extension, you will start receiving all calls to that extension, and any outbound calls you make will be made from that extension.

f you'd like any help more help using Communicator please don't hesitate to get in touch!