Here you will find a number of useful questions and answers to some of our most commonly asked PBX questions. Please check the related articles in the sidebar for more in-depth information around our PBX features.
The PBX at it’s core is a phone system, and therefore can be used by all members of a business from all different departments.
The Infinity PBX is a great tool for understanding caller behaviour. For example, it can reveal peak caller times of day and identify when how many seconds of ring time the average caller will accept before hanging up, so that you know when to have more operators manning the phones. Our clients' feedback has helped us to build a suite of reports and features which can benefit the day-to-day users in addition to the managers and decision-makers of a business.
Our PBX can be used in conjunction with a call tracking installation and more advanced features such as the Caller Insight App to transform it into an incredibly powerful and intuitive marketing tool. The Caller Insight App provides real-time caller information to make calls more intuitive, and greater efficiencies in logging calls in a CRM to save valuable operator time.
Infinity Portal: this is where you can see/hear the calls that have come in to your phones, and where you can also manage your PBX Users, Ring Groups and Queues that are part of your PBX Installation.
Infinity Server: this is where we run the Hosted PBX service from; it runs in our data centre.
PBX Installation: this is a platform used to measure and monitor activity related to phone calls. It is more of an operational tool than a marketing tool, and the reports are tailored more towards phone operations and caller behaviour than a call tracking installation is. PBX report examples include call wait times, queue drop-off behaviour, inbound/outbound operator monitoring, and many more. PBX installations tend to include collections of PBX Users, Ring Groups and Queues. Each Infinity PBX installation is assigned a unique IGRP ID and a unique domain name, for example, Infinity's own Hosted PBX domain is infinity.infinitycloud.com.
PBX Users: these are individual user accounts that belong to a specific Phone Installation. They are not the same as Portal Login accounts. A single physical phone could be configured to login to multiple Phone Users. Another way of thinking about this, is that each Phone User represents an old school 'phone line', but this isn't really accurate. A better way to think of this, is that each PBXUser is like an E-mail mailbox - you can have multiple mailboxes on a single PC too. Commonly, however, there is a 1:1 relationship between a PBX User and a specific physical phone.
Ring Groups: these are exactly what they sound like, collection of PBX Users under a SIP single address, that when called causes all the phones registered to the Phone Users in that group to ring at the same time. The first person to pick up gets the call and the other phones stop ringing. Each PBX installation can have multiple ring groups.
SIP Address: PBX Users, Ring Groups and Queues are given a SIP address; this looks like an E-mail address, but is used to provide an address that you can 'ring'.
E.g. joe.blogs@infinity.infinitycloud.com - would be a User's SIP address. A Ring Group's SIP address might be something like support.team@infinity.infinitycloud.com. A Queue's Sip address might be something like support.queue@infinity.infinitycloud.com.
Please see our article on Hosted PBX Requirements which details the types of hardware required, minimum recommended internet speed, and much more.
We do not supply hardware, this will need to be sourced independently.
How do I set up users?
We have a PBX Users article dedicated to this which describes how to set up users and their DDIs.
How many users can I have?
As many as you would like. A certain quantity of initial users will be included in your package, additional users will be chargeable. The charges for additional users vary from package to package and are billed pro-rata.
If you would like any additional information regarding costs of our packages, please contact our Support Team.
How do I adjust a PBX user's username?
If a user has a name change, or would like their PBX username to be abbreviated (e.g. from Joseph to Joe), a new PBX user will need to be created and the previous one deleted. It is not possible to modify the username of a PBX user once it has been created.
Important considerations:
- Please ensure that you update the handset config accordingly
- Creating a new user with a new username will create a new SIP address. Please update the SIP address of the user's DDI (designated phone number) in the 'destination' field to match the SIP address of the new PBX user
- You should also update the 'description' field in user's DDI to match the new username
- Add the user to any necessary ring groups. Any queues that the ring groups are attached to will automatically update to include the new user.
If an operator is on a call and they hit the reject button because another call is ringing through, is the caller diverted to voicemail or will the caller continue to ring in the ring group?
If it is ringing to a ring group, it will continue to ring the ring group. If the caller has called the PBX User's DDI, the caller it will be sent to voicemail (if enabled).
How do I set or amend an extension for a user?
This is covered in our PBX Users article which explains how to add/amend an extension as part of the user setup.
I'm played this message when trying to make an outbound call, what does it mean and how do I fix it?
“You are not able to dial this destination because you do not have a suitable outbound Caller ID set. Please contact your administrator for assistance.”
Our research has found that some telephony carriers will not connect phone calls if an outbound Caller ID is not present against the PBX user. To ensure that our clients do not experience this scenario, we have made fulfilment of the outbound Caller ID a mandatory criteria. If this criteria is not fulfilled and an outbound call is attempted, this warning message will be played to the PBX user.
The solution? If a PBX user is likely to call out to UK numbers or any other non-US countries, they will need to fill their UK Caller ID field to be filled. Likewise if a PBX user is likely to call out to US numbers, they will need to fill their US Caller ID field with a US number.
Failure to add any UK or US Caller IDs to the relevant PBX User fields will prevent outbound calls from connecting.
A ring group is a collection of users which certain inbound calls will be directed to.
A queue is more advanced; it is a process or flow for inbound calls.
For example, a call will be directed to a ring group for a certain quantity of time, and if unanswered it will be directed to another ring group or user for a period, and so on until the call is either answered, sent to voicemail or terminated.
Yes you can. Welcome messages, IVRs and similar audio features are applied at a tracking pool (Dial In Group) level.
This is the flow:
- Inbound call is routed to an Infinity number
- Caller experiences features/audio messages on the Dial In Group which the phone number is attached to
- Call routes to the destination SIP address assigned to phone number
- Call routes to the ring group attached to SIP address
- PBX users in ring group can answer the call
Therefore, if you need your ring groups to have different features/audio messages, you will need additional tracking pools (Dial In Groups). The tracking pools hold the numbers which route calls to your ring groups.
Our Support Team are able to create additional tracking pools for you. We can also relocate any existing fixed numbers into new tracking pools within an installation upon request.
Absolutely, but you will need to have a specific Dial Plan built for this purpose. Please contact our Support Team for more information, or to request this.
Call Abandonment Rate Report
Question: If callers hang up while listening to the welcome message on a dial plan with no IVR (no "options" to press), even though they do not have to make an IVR selection, will this still count as a call abandoning in the IVR?
Answer: Yes, if a caller drops out in a dial plan before connecting to an agent then it will count as an IVR drop out, even if there are no "options" to press.
A pin (Personal Identification Number) is a code which can be used to prevent public or unauthorised access to a PBX or private areas such as a voice mailbox. This adds an additional layer of security for prevention of hacking or fraudulent use.
Every PBX user has a personal login which is password protected. The passwords must be at least 8 digits long and contain a combination of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and special characters.
It is the responsibility of the users to ensure that they do not share their passwords, keep them safe from public view, ensure that they are not easily guessable and change them semi-regularly.
Our US PBX servers are based in Los Angeles and New York.
Call forwarding can be achieved at one of two levels. The first is at a user settings level within your Infinity PBX installation which provides the ability to follow to a mobile number. The second is located - model dependent - on your PBX handset itself, in order to permanently forward calls to any other device or number.
Installation
- Log in to your Infinity PBX installation.
- Navigate to the Telephony Settings area in the top right of the interface.
- Under Phone System Installs, choose the installation you wish to edit.
- Next, select the user you wish to edit.
- Toward the bottom of the list of configuration fields, you'll find the options Mobile Number and Follow to Mobile.
- You can control the number the user forwards to by editing the Mobile Number field. This value needs to be in international format.
- Finally, to turn the feature on, simply tick Follow to Mobile and save your changes.
When a call is made to this user's DDI and the user fails to pick up the call after twenty seconds of ring time, the caller will be forwarded to the mobile number specified.
PBX Handset
Depending upon the model of your PBX handset, it may be possible to forward calls to any other handset or telephone number. Infinity recommends Yealink handsets, and models by this manufacturer will be largely the same process. With recent models, the only difference is the visual controls (touchscreen or directional pads) used to perform the same actions.
- Press the TRAN button on your handset.
- Under the Forward to field, enter the extension, SIP address or PSTN number you wish to forward your calls to.
- Press Save.
- Initiate a test call from another line to check that your settings have saved successfully.
You can also edit these preferences through the Menu > Features > Call Forward route.
If you do not have a Yealink branded handset, there is usually a similar process for setting up call forwarding in your handset settings. Please consult your manufacturers manual for more details.
Currently we do not actively block any countries or provide any 'maximum charge' prevention features to avoid incurring high international costs.
There may be some countries we cannot reach based on our carrier agreements, but we can generally reach most destinations.
If you are dialling to the US from a PBX which is registered on our UK servers, then you need to have an outbound US caller ID in place. Likewise if you are registered on our US servers and calling any other country, you must have a UK outbound caller ID registered. Leaving this field blank may prevent the call from connecting, due to carrier regulations.
Calls out to some toll-free numbers do not go through because your PBX User has the outbound Caller ID set to a toll-free number, or you are calling a toll-free number for a country that does not accept toll-free calls from outside the country. The reason toll-free-to-toll-free calls will sometimes not go through in the United States is that neither party knows who will be paying for the call, so instead the underlying carriers do not complete the call.
If you change the outbound Caller ID on your PBX User to a toll (geo) number, this should resolve the blocking issue.
This is not currently available through our PBX, however it is on our road map to have this functionality added.
If a user attempts to dial an emergency number from our service, they will be played the following message:
“You are not able to dial emergency services from this service, please use a fixed line or mobile device instead.”
Emergency service numbers include 101, 112, 999, 911, etc.
Infinity have reserved a number range within the PBX system so that users can use shortcodes on their handsets to activate features.
Consquently, it's not possible to create extensions in the Phone System Editor that use the number range 7XXX.
If you attempt to do so you will encounter the following error message:
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, and ask you to use an alternative number range for your extensions.
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