If your organisation routes telephone numbers through the collaboration app, the app becomes your desk phone: same number, same voicemail, but with a dial pad that lives wherever you log in. This chapter covers the daily voice workflow, not the telephony engineering behind it.
Placing and Receiving Calls
Calls start from three places: the dial pad for external numbers, a contact card for colleagues, and the calls history for returning anything missed. Incoming calls ring every signed-in device at once by default — desktop, laptop, mobile. If that ever feels like too much, the device settings let you choose which devices ring, which is the polite configuration for shared offices.
During a call the control bar offers mute, dial pad (for menu systems: "press 3 for accounts"), hold, transfer, and add-person. Adding a person mid-call creates a small conference; promoting it to a scheduled meeting is one click if the conversation outgrows the call.
Transfers: Warm Beats Cold
A cold transfer dumps the caller onto someone else's ringing phone with no context. A warm transfer — consult first, then hand over — takes twenty extra seconds and prevents the caller repeating their story for the fourth time. The transfer dialog shows colleagues' presence, so you can see whether you are about to ring someone who is already on a call.
Call groups and queues, in one paragraph
Reception desks and support lines usually run as call queues: a shared number that rings a group in a configured order, with overflow rules and greetings. As an end user you only need two things: your position in the group's ring order, and the opt-out for lunch breaks — most queues honour your presence status, so setting yourself away actually stops the queue ringing you.
Voicemail and Greetings
Voicemail lives in the calls tab, with transcripts where the organisation enables them — read the transcript, skip the audio, reply by chat. Record a greeting that states your name, your typical response window, and an alternative route for urgent matters. The default computer-generated greeting tells callers nothing and reads as neglect.
Delegation for Assistants and Deputies
Delegation lets one person answer and place calls on behalf of another, and optionally read their voicemail. It is configured by the executive in the calling settings, not by IT. If you support someone senior, ask for delegate rights explicitly and agree in writing which actions you may take — placing calls, answering, or both.
Call Quality Without a Network Degree
- Prefer wired or 5 GHz wireless over congested guest networks; audio drops are almost always local.
- Close bandwidth-heavy uploads before important calls — cloud backups are the classic culprit.
- If audio breaks up, switch the call to your mobile network rather than debugging mid-conversation.
- Use the in-app call health view after a bad call; it records jitter and packet loss and gives your IT team something actionable.
Voice is the oldest collaboration technology and still the fastest for ambiguity. With calling covered, the next chapter looks at the visual half of synchronous work: presenting your screen and editing documents live with other people.
