Call forwarding, ring groups, and after-hours routing

Most phone systems handle three separate things that people tend to lump together: forwarding your own extension, how a group of phones rings, and what happens outside business hours. Knowing which one you need saves a lot of confusion.

Forwarding your own extension

This is the one you can control yourself, and it sends calls for your extension somewhere else.

From the GoTo Connect app is usually easiest — look for call forwarding in your settings, choose where calls should go, and turn it on. The app is also where you turn it off, which is the step people forget.

From your Yealink desk phone: press the Menu key, go to Features › Call Forward, and you will see three options:

• Always Forward — every call goes to the target immediately.
• Busy Forward — only when you are already on a call.
• No Answer Forward — after a set number of rings.

Enter the destination number and enable it. An icon appears on the display when forwarding is active.

Watch for these:

• Enter external numbers exactly as you would dial them, including any prefix your system requires.
• Forwarding to a mobile means the caller ID may show the office number, not the original caller. That surprises people.
• Voicemail then belongs to wherever you forwarded to. If you forward to your mobile and do not answer, the caller reaches your personal voicemail greeting — not what you want for clients.
• Turn it off when you return. A forward left on is a common cause of “nobody can reach me”.

Ring groups

A ring group is several phones ringing for one number — sales, support, reception. How it behaves depends on configuration:

• Simultaneous — every phone rings at once.
• Sequential — one at a time in a set order.
• Round robin — starts with a different person each time, so the same person is not always first.

Changes to ring groups are made centrally, so tell us what you need. Useful things we can adjust: who is in the group, the order, how long it rings before moving on, and where it lands if nobody answers.

A tip that saves a lot of grief: if someone leaves or changes role, tell us to remove them from ring groups. Phones ringing at an empty desk delay every call in the queue.

Business hours and after-hours

Your system has a schedule that decides how calls are handled at different times. Typically calls route normally during hours and go to a message, voicemail, or an answering service outside them.

To change your regular hours — a new closing time, a different Saturday arrangement — contact us with the new schedule and we will apply it.

For holidays and one-off closures, give us as much notice as you can. Sending the whole year’s closures in one go in January is ideal; we will schedule them all and you never have to think about it again.

For an unexpected closure — weather, a burst pipe — call us and we can switch to a closed greeting quickly. Recording a specific message (“we are closed today due to weather and will reopen tomorrow at 8am”) is much better than callers hitting the standard after-hours message and assuming you have gone out of business.

Getting calls covered while you are away

In rough order of how well they work:

1. Forward to a colleague who has agreed to cover. Best for client-facing roles.
2. Add a temporary member to your ring group so calls are picked up by whoever is free.
3. Update your voicemail greeting with an alternative contact. The minimum you should do.
4. Forward to your mobile. Fine for short absences, less so for holiday — and be aware of the voicemail caveat above.

Whatever you choose, tell the person covering. The most common failure is a forward set to someone who does not know they are receiving your calls.

Things worth asking us about

• A dedicated after-hours voicemail box separate from your personal one.
• A holiday schedule loaded in advance for the year.
• Call reporting, if you want to know how many calls are missed and when.
• A specific closure greeting recorded and kept ready for weather days.

---

Need routing changed? Call 440-991-9980 or email support@iconiumnetworks.com. For anything time-sensitive — an unexpected closure, a member of staff out unexpectedly — please phone; we can usually make the change within minutes.