Zoom Phone-student employees manning reception desk

[hamstra]

We're trying to figure out the best practice for handling shared numbers that are answered by a mix of full time and student employees. We don't think we want to get named/user seat for each student employee so, we will probably try to incorporate Common Area licensing for them. Of course, this makes it difficult for them to handle calls other than with a physical phone or similar, no apps. When we don't have student employees available, we DO want to have full time employees cover those numbers with a live body answering, not a recording. We also would like to be able to send/receive SMS from these numbers so, I believe that means we cannot use a Shared Line Group.

I've read this document

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0060035

but would like input from someone who has "cracked this nut" before to see what pros/cons they've found with various approaches.

[DF110]

Hi @hamstra! Great question. You are correct with your assumption about Shared Lines. I don't think that would be your best option. I think the Common Area Phone (CAP) is the best option with some "hacks" to make it work for your situation. Try this: 

• Create a Call Queue for the shared number.

  • Assign full-time employees as queue members.

  • Enable SMS support on the queue.

  • Set business hours routing to include CAP devices (e.g., desk phones in a physical office) as primary ring targets.

  • Set overflow routing or fallback to full-time staff when CAP devices (students) do not answer.

• Install physical phones (CAP devices) in student-accessible areas.

  • Assign Common Area licenses.

  • These will ring during designated hours when students are expected to be available.

• Use "Overflow to Alternate Destination" or "Routing Profile" in the queue:

  • If no answer at the CAP phones after X seconds, route to full-time staff who can pick up in-app or on Zoom softphones.

• SMS Handling

  • Route SMS to a shared mailbox or Zoom Phone inbox monitored by licensed full-time staff.

  • Students would not be able to reply unless they are on a named user license, so SMS should ideally be handled by the full-time team.

Let us know if you have additional questions! 

[hamstra]

Thank you for the pointers. This is very similar to a set up that we had come up with but you have provided a couple of improvements. One shortcoming of using a call queue is that we, apparently, cannot delegate management of voicemail to an end user. It does not appear to us that end users can update greetings, settings, etc., this must be done by phone administrator. If this is indeed the case, it would be nice if, in a future update, the ability to delegate management of a voicemail box to end users could be added.