Hello and welcome to a brief tutorial on using the hosted Contact portal.

Its purpose is for users to indicate to the cloud telephony system that they are present and readily available to take calls.

It’s a simple case of logging into a website with a username and password, selecting how you want to receive and even make calls, and off you go. This portal is used either in conjunction with an external device, such as a fixed handset, like a Polycom, Cisco, or YeaLink phone, or can be used via web browser as long as you have a speaker and microphone, a headset is recommended.

In this tutorial, we’ll be going through using Google Chrome to launch the portal and sign in. I’ll then talk through the layout, how you can change your agent status, how an inbound call looks, and how you can initiate outbound calls. So let’s get started.

I’ve already loaded Google Chrome and the website I’ve entered at the top is contact.unlimitedhorizon.co.uk/login and when I launch that, I have a login area in the centre. It prompts for the username first, so it validates I’m an existing user on the telephony platform and if i am it then prompts for the password. So I’ve put my test username in here, click sign in, and then it asks for a password. So these credentials can be issued either by a Daisy representative or by a local administrator client side.

You’re then presented with two radio buttons. The top one is if you have a physical telephone on a desk and want to make and receive calls via that. An example of this, I’ve got a doctor’s surgery with five receptionists. Each have a handset on their workstation. They have been issued with a Contact agent license and they want to make and receive calls via that handset. I would keep the radio button on this top one. However, if I wanted to make and receive calls via the web browser, so I’ve got an inbuilt microphone and speaker, potentially a headset, I would select the bottom radio button. So this was quite handy say I’m working from home and I didn’t have a physical handset on my desk.

For the purposes of this tutorial, I’m going to keep the radio button on this bottom one using my browser and click sign in.

Here is the agent portal, gives your username on the top right, say I inadvertently selected the wrong radio button on that previous screen, instead of logging out and logging back into the portal, you can click this little headset icon here so you can update your contact method. So say I did have a physical handset on my desk and I wanted to make and receive calls via a receiver, I can select the top one and click ok. But continuing with the tutorial, I’m going to continue using my browser and click off of that.

So this portal heavily relies on agent, statuses. So when you are signed into the portal, you are typically in an available status. And I’ve got green LED here, green circle and it’s got timer how long you’ve been in that status. So if you wanted to receive calls, you are readily available to take the next inbound caller, you keep in this status. But say you’ve gone away from your desk, you want to go on your lunch break or quick coffee break, or you’re in the middle of some admin tasks and don’t want an inbound call to be shown on the screen, you would use this teacup icon. This is where you set your break status. So say I’m in the series of tasks, my little LED turns from green to orange and it says I’m undertaking some tasks and the timer refreshes how long I’ve been in that status. If I wanted to go back to the available status, I’ve got this little symbol here, which is a tick with a circle around it. Set your status to available. And there we go. I’ve got my green LED back.

In the centre I’ve got my call history and on the right-hand side I’ve got some agent performance. How many calls I’ve been taking, how many calls I’ve made, some KPI information, status information at the bottom. So let’s demonstrate how an inbound call looks. So if I dial into the queue, there we go. We have got an inbound caller. My status has changed, call incoming, I’ve got the telephone number of the inbound caller and I’ve got two buttons here, green and red. So if I wanted to accept the call, I click the green button and if I didn’t want to accept the call, I can either ignore it or the best habit to get into is changing your break status, as we discussed previously.

So if I change, click the teacup icon and do tasks, I’m no longer offered that call. It won’t show on my screen until I press the available button. Now, you may have seen just while I was doing that, the call temporarily disappeared from my screen, and I didn’t touch anything. The queue has what’s known as a bounce timer. So what it’s doing is it’s constantly seeking whether there’s anyone signed into the queue; I could have five receptionists and one of the receptionists had just finished a call, it’ll reinvite the queue, the caller that is position one, it’ll reinvite to that receptionist, which has just been made available. So it’s constantly searching and replenishing itself. If I wanted to accept that call, if I’m using the web browser radio button, which I selected, I click this green button here.

However, if I selected the top radio button during the sign in phase, I could just simply, lift the receiver of the handset on my desk equally, does the same thing. So you’ll now see that my status has changed. It’s not green, it’s not orange, it’s now red and it’s stating that the call is in progress. I’ve got timer how long I’m speaking with this person. It continually tells me what the inbound callers telephone number is, and I’ve got a series of options on the right-hand side.

So I can either end the call in red, I can put the caller on hold so they’ll hear some hold music and I can release the call, start speaking with them. And equally I can just put that person on mute. So I’m going to end this call at the moment and there’s a little wrap-up area, wrap-up period, and it’s only for a couple of seconds. It’s just to close that session down and then the next call will be retrieved from the call queue if anyone’s waiting.

What I’m now going to do is I’m going to do the same thing again onto the call, but I’m going to transfer the call and I’ll show you how to do that. So let’s place the next inbound call through to the portal. Right I’m going to answer that call, accept, and I’ve got an area at the bottom transfer and consult. So say I’m going to transfer it to my mobile and what it does is it would either find if there’s a directory listing for me. It doesn’t matter if there isn’t. And you’ll see two buttons at the bottom. You have got consult and transfer. So the difference between the two, if I click the green button consult, I will speak with the transfering party, speak with the user at the end of the mobile saying, I’ve got someone who’s transited through our call queue to speak to you. Do you wish to accept the call? They’ll go, yes, okay. And then, you can click the button again that pushes the call through.

If I know that the person, the mobile user here is already expecting that call, don’t need to consult with them, I can press the blue button. So if I click transfer, that call goes and transits across and now my mobile goes quickly accept and end the call there. It is a simple case of replenishing these steps, answering calls, changing your break status.

If you wanted to make an outbound call, you can either enter the telephone number here, so put the mobile number in and then click the green button here, or there’s another button underneath the label outbound where you can click call and a scenario where you might use this button as opposed to the above area, say I worked for different teams, different departments, and each had a different telephone number associated with that department. What you would do is you would select the relevant department, the relevant queue, and the outbound call would be presented with a different telephone number. If you’ve only got one telephone number associated with your telephony system, you can just use the top area.

Say I had an inbound call, and let me just redial the queue again, I’ll show you the dilemma that we have, right? I’ve got an inbound call coming through. I want to make an outbound call. I can’t because that area with a quick dial and the other button is no longer visible. So what I’ve got to do is I’ve got to change my break status, change it into something else, say I’m completing tasks or I’m making outbound calls. I’ve got the quick dial and the outbound area visible, so that is a way round it.

The layout is exactly the same, for outbound calls. When a call is in session, it’s still got the same areas for mute on hold and ending the call. So after I’ve finished my day’s duties and I want to exit out the portal, you would click your name on the top right-hand corner, click that and click log out, and it’ll take you back to the login page.

Thank you very much for watching. If you’ve got any queries on use of the portal, feel free to contact us.

Our telephone number is 020 8300 9495 option one. Equally, we have an email address, which is health@daisycomms.co.uk.

Thanks for watching.