First steps
Working with XPhone Connect for the first time? No problem! Here you will find everything you need to know about topics such as initial setup and operation. So, you can adapt your XPhone Connect Client to your needs in no time and get the most out of your communication centre.
Client
Structure of the Client
The XPhone Connect Client follows a messenger style design and consists of four areas:
- In the header area, you will find everything
about yourself. Here you can set your own presence status and optionally add a
status message in the note field. Here you will also find the Client Settings
(gear) and Extras (drop-down arrow).
- The navigation bar is located on the left. Here
you can switch between different views (contacts, journal and conversations).
Depending on your preference, the navigation can be displayed broadly or
narrowly.
- To the right of the navigation area is the light
grey content area. Depending on the view, the corresponding content is
displayed in this area.
- In the footer area, you define your working environment. Here you can set call forwarding and define your preferred device. In the lower right corner, you can also change the window size of the Client.
Presence
Presence management
Through your presence status you signal to your colleagues whether you are currently available or not. Similar to the traffic light system, the colours mean:
- Green – you are available,
- Yellow – you are temporarily not available and
- Red – you are busy or in a meeting.
If you are not logged on, your presence status is greyed out.
If you have activated automatic calendar syncing with Outlook or Notes, your presence status is automatically set by calendar entries in Outlook or Notes. Regardless of appointments, your telephony status changes automatically when you are on the phone.
You can manually adjust your status at any time. To do so, click on the presence display under your name in the Client and select the corresponding status and the corresponding duration.
Status messages that you write in the note field are displayed to your colleagues in addition to your presence status.
Note: for all presence profiles (except Available and Unavailable), if the validity period of the presence status expires (after 1 hour, 2 hours 4 hours, Today, etc.) and your XPhone Connect Client is open, the presence status is then automatically set to Available again. If, on the other hand, the validity period of your status Available expires, your presence status is then automatically set to Unavailable, even if the XPhone Connect Client is still open. This allows you to signal to your colleagues, for example, how long you are still available today.
Relationships
Relationship types
Via relationships you define which information (e.g. presence symbol, meeting duration, meeting subject, caller information etc.) you share with other people in your company, or which rights (e.g. pick up calls, set presence status or forwarding etc.) you grant other people. A distinction is made between the following relationships:
- Assistant
- Team colleague
- Employee
- External person
- Unknown person
As a rule, a default relationship between you and your colleagues is preset by your administrator. Different groups of people, e.g. colleagues from your department, can have a different relationship to you than e.g. all the other employees in your organisation.
Note: depending on the server settings, it may not be possible for relationships to be changed by users. In this case, relationships are managed centrally by your administrator.
Assign relationships
You can change default relationships at any time for individual persons or for entire departments or groups of people. To see which relationship a particular contact has to you, right click on a contact and go to "Change relationship to contact". Here you can see the relationship this contact has to you and what rights you give this contact. You can change these by clicking on a particular relationship.
By changing the
relationship, you grant or restrict certain rights to that person. It should be
noted that relationships are unidirectional. In plain text, this means: you can
assign rights to other people or withdraw them. This does not, however, affect
what information you see about or which rights you have for the contact.
Example: you make someone your assistant. This person now sees your detailed presence information, detailed call information and forwarding. This person is also allowed to accept your calls and to set presence and forwarding for you. This does not mean, however, that you are automatically the assistant of that person. This relationship would need to be assigned to you by that person.
Tip: in Help under < Tools / Help / XPhone Connect – Brief Guide / Contact List / Contact List – Relationship > you can find a clearly structured matrix in
which the individual relationships are described again in detail.
Note: depending on the server settings, it may not be possible for relationships to be changed by users. In this case, relationships are managed centrally by your administrator.
Using multiple selection
To change relationships for several people, use the contact search in your XPhone Client. Change the database to be browsed to XPhone Users and search for the desired contacts in the search field. You can search e.g. by department, location, extension etc. or exclude certain search parameters with a minus sign. Select the desired contacts (hold down the Shift key to select an entire list or the Ctrl key to select individual contacts from a list) and right click on one of the selected contacts. Under Change relationships to contacts you can now set the relationship for all selected contacts.
Example: Your company is called Ventureprise Ltd and you want to set the relationship for all employees except those from the sales department to Team colleague. So, in the search window you search for: Ventureprise –Sales. Select the top contact in the search results list, scroll to the last contact and holding down the Shift key, click on it. Now you have selected all the contacts that match this search query. If you now press the Ctrl key, you can exclude individual contacts from the selection. If you are satisfied with your selection, right click on one of the selected contacts. Under Change relationship to contacts you can now set the relationship for all selected contacts.
Note: You can also use multi-select to start a group conversation.
Contacts
Find contacts
A key component of XPhone Connect is the contact search. Here you will find all contacts from all connected address books, databases and applications.
By selecting a specific data source, search results can be specifically limited. If, on the other hand, you search in Own and company contacts, all connected data sources are searched. Thanks to the flexible free-text search you can search by last name, first name, company, department, location, title, telephone number etc. A minus sign in front of a search term can also exclude certain search words. For example, if you want to see all the contacts of a company who do not work in Sales, you can search for Example company -Sales.
Contact information
To get more detailed information about an XPhone user, move your cursor over the corresponding profile. In a tooltip you will get more information, such as detailed presence information, forwarding or upcoming appointments, depending on the relationship you have with the contact.
If you move the mouse over a contact (outside the profile photo), after a moment the context menu appears. The most important actions such as Call, Open chat or display contact card, can be carried out with a click. You can use the ellipse (three dots) to display all other menu items. Alternatively, by right clicking on a contact you can display the context menu with all menu items.
In the contact card you will find all contact information as well as the dashboard.
Organising contacts
So, you do not lose track of your contacts, it's best to organise them in groups. For this you can create as many groups as you like, name them freely and sort them whichever way is most useful for you. To create a new contact group, click the Actions button in the contact view next to an existing contact group, and then click Create new group. Use the Actions button to rename, move or delete groups already created.
From the context menu of a contact you can assign it to one or more contact groups. To assign multiple contacts to a group, search for contacts and select the desired contacts via multiple selection (using Shift or Ctrl). By right clicking on one of the selected contacts you can assign multiple contacts to a group.
If you have numerous groups with many contacts, it can be advantageous to close individual or all groups.
Note: using Manage groups in the Groups menu you can change the order of the groups and show or hide individual groups. This is especially useful if central contact groups are maintained by your administrator and you want to hide one or more groups.
Tip: in the Groups menu, you can start new group conversations in seconds. To do so, click New conference call. Once the conversation has opened, you can now select the medium (Spontaneous conference call, Chat or Screen-Sharing) to communicate with the group members.
Work environment
Set forwarding
You can define your work environment at the bottom of the client. As long as your presence status is Available your office telephone is active by default. Regardless of your presence status, you can always forward incoming calls by clicking on Call forwarding on / Adjust call forwarding. In the following dialogue, you can define whether internal, external or all calls should be forwarded, and to which number. If the option Do not disturb is selected, the caller will hear a busy signal.
AnyDevice
A very convenient alternative to simple forwarding is offered by AnyDevice and Follow-Me. To use these functions, click on Office / Manage devices and in the following dialogue create a device that you want to use for your work. For every device in this overview you can define whether Follow-Me is activated by default.
As the name AnyDevice suggests, with this function you can use any phone you like with your XPhone Connect Client. If you enable AnyDevice you can set up and manage outgoing calls via your XPhone Connect client – regardless of what device you are calling with. If you start a call via your XPhone client, the device defined in AnyDevice is called. If you answer the call on your active AnyDevice, the connection is established to the desired party. The connection is maintained via your own company and allows you to control the entire CTI (swap hold, consultation, hold etc.) via your Connect Client. An additional advantage is the One-Number signalling: regardless of which device you are actually using, your call partner is always shown your office number.
Follow-Me
The big advantage of Follow-Me over normal call forwarding is that incoming calls are not simply forwarded to another phone. Rather, you can use the full CTI functionalities of the XPhone Connect Client for incoming calls, your telephony status is automatically adjusted and all calls are documented in your Unified Journal.
Settings
Set profile photo
Give your name a face and show your colleagues who they are dealing with. You can open the profile photo dialogue via <Settings / General / Personal settings / My photo / Change ...>. In the next step, you can either take a photo with your webcam, select a photo from your hard drive, or delete your current profile photo. Once you have decided on a photo, you can change the zoom with the slider. Use the mouse to choose the appropriate section. Ideally your photo should fit over the entire width and height to avoid white edges.
Display & address books
Select the Show conversations in separate windows option to display each conversation in a separate window, unattached to your XPhone Client. In this mode conversations also no longer appear in the Client's navigation bar.
To start XPhone automatically when you start up your computer so you do not have to open the program manually, activate the Automatically start XPhone Connect on system start option. Alternatively, you can set up your XPhone Connect Client to start and close automatically with your Outlook client.
If you enable the option Assign a higher search priority to local address books than XPhone Connect Directory data sources, in a contact search in your Client the search results are
prioritised so that contacts from your personal address books (such as private
Outlook contacts) are displayed first.
Presence profiles
Under <Settings / Presence profiles / My profiles>, you can create new profiles and edit or delete existing profiles.
Presence profiles allow
you to define what should happen with incoming calls when, for example, you are
having a break or in a meeting.
To do so create a new profile under My profiles or select a profile that you want to edit. In the next step, in the Change profile 'XYZ' dialogue below you define:
- The presence status
- The name of the presence profile
- Whether and which calls should be forwarded
- The phone number to which you want to forward
In some cases, you may only be able to edit profiles managed centrally by your system administrator to a limited extent. You can recognise such profiles by the note Limited change owing to central profile.
The order of the presence profiles can be changed using the arrow keys in the My Profiles dialogue.
Presence settings
Under <Activate profiles automatically / At program start and end / Options ...> you define which presence profiles should be activated automatically:
- At program start
- At program end
- On user inactivity
Here you can also specify after how many minutes you want to be set to Inactive and /or whether a locking of the screen causes you to be set to Inactive automatically.
Under < Activate profiles automatically / For scheduled Outlook calendar appointments/ Calendar options ...> you will find settings with which you can set automatic syncing with your Outlook or Notes calendar. For example, you can set whether your presence status is automatically changed when you have entered an appointment in your Outlook calendar.
If you have activated
automatic calendar syncing you can find a list of all appointments that have
been transferred from Outlook or Notes to your Connect Client in the appointment
list under < Automatically activate
profiles / Scheduled via Outlook calendar / Terminliste…> . In this
dialogue you also have the option to manually trigger calendar syncing.