Use function keys on your desk phone

Function keys turn a desk phone into a control panel: see who is free, grab a ringing call, transfer with one press.

Function keys turn a desk phone into a control panel: see who is free, grab a ringing call, transfer with one press.

What a function key can do

• Watch a colleague. The light shows whether they are free, ringing or on a call. Press to call them, or press while they are ringing to answer for them.
• Speed Dial for a number you use constantly.
• Park a call and pick it up from another phone.
• Voicemail. A light when there is a message, and one press to listen.
• Call group keys, to log in and out of a queue.

Reading the lights

The colours are the point of having them. A glance tells you whether to transfer a caller to a colleague or take a message, without asking first.

A Colleague key follows two things at once: the call status, incoming call or in a call, and the user status, available, DND or away. A voicemail key turns steady blue when there is a new message, and stays blue until somebody reads it or marks it read.

Answering someone else's phone

When a monitored colleague's key is flashing, press it to take that call. For a reception desk or a small team this is faster than any other method, and it is why a WelcomeConsole 5 has so many keys.

Setting them up

1. Open Collaboration 7 and go to Favorites.
2. Add a key and choose what it should do: a colleague, a speed dial, park, voicemail or a call group.
3. Put the people you speak to daily on the first row, and everything else after them.

The phone calls them Fn keys and WMS calls them function keys, but it is one list: a change you make applies wherever you sign in, because the keys belong to your account rather than to the handset.

Expansion modules

How many keys you get depends on the phone, and the range is wide: 4 on a Start 5, 21 on a WorkForce 5, 45 on a ForcePro 5 and 106 on a WelcomeConsole 5, the last of those counting 32 on its built-in expansion module. Beyond the first screen the keys sit on pages you step through, so a key on page three is a key nobody presses.

That is why the number is less useful than the order. If a reception desk needs more than a WelcomeConsole 5 holds, the answer is rarely another module. Tell us what the desk has to watch and we will look at it with you.

See also

• Sign in to a Wildix desk phone
• Create call groups and pickup groups
• What each key type does