Hi everyone, my users keep complaining about this as we find conferencing with 3CX very confusing as it seems to work different from most other systems (including 3CX itself when using a desk phone).
With using an IP phone with 3CX, as well as pretty much every other phone system I've ever used in my life, from Cisco to Avaya to Digium etc, if I'm on the phone with Bob and I want to conference in Sally, the process is the same:
With the 3CX softphone on windows or cell phone, it doesn't work like that though and is really confusing. If I'm talking to Bob and I press Conference, it clicks for a second then transfers him to 7000 which is called Conference, and then gives me a screen to add numbers. If I add numbers and press next, it just calls those people, showing our office line calling (not my DID) and then "CONFERENCE" as the call display name, so the person you are calling has no idea who you are. It also prevents you from giving a warm greeting, like "are you free to talk now can I bring Bob in?" as instead if they answer they are just now in a conference with potentially multiple people. Because of this, users almost never answer when we call them this way as they usually then say they didn't know it was us calling because it just says CONFERENCE and not our proper caller ID.
Instead the closest I can figure is doing the following:
The reason it's so confusing is because if you're using an IP phone on 3CX, it works the way we want like my first example, it's just the softphone that does it completely differently.
With using an IP phone with 3CX, as well as pretty much every other phone system I've ever used in my life, from Cisco to Avaya to Digium etc, if I'm on the phone with Bob and I want to conference in Sally, the process is the same:
- Tell Bob I'll bring in Sally, and press the CONFERENCE button which puts Bob on hold and gives me a dial tone
- I dial Sally's number and she answers. I can speak to her privately as long as I want.
- When I'm ready, I press CONFERENCE again, which joins all 3 calls together.
With the 3CX softphone on windows or cell phone, it doesn't work like that though and is really confusing. If I'm talking to Bob and I press Conference, it clicks for a second then transfers him to 7000 which is called Conference, and then gives me a screen to add numbers. If I add numbers and press next, it just calls those people, showing our office line calling (not my DID) and then "CONFERENCE" as the call display name, so the person you are calling has no idea who you are. It also prevents you from giving a warm greeting, like "are you free to talk now can I bring Bob in?" as instead if they answer they are just now in a conference with potentially multiple people. Because of this, users almost never answer when we call them this way as they usually then say they didn't know it was us calling because it just says CONFERENCE and not our proper caller ID.
Instead the closest I can figure is doing the following:
- Tell Bob I'll bring in Sally, and press CONFERENCE on the softphone which puts him on hold for a split second, then transfers him to 7000
- Manually select the dialpad button to show I'm on Line 1, and now press Line 2 to get a dial tone
- Call Sally on Line 2, speak with her, and then press CONFERENCE again to now put her into the conference and all 3 are connected
The reason it's so confusing is because if you're using an IP phone on 3CX, it works the way we want like my first example, it's just the softphone that does it completely differently.
