As we post this message, citizens in North and South Carolina prepare themselves for Hurricane Florence and we wanted to assist by providing tips on how to use some of the features of your phone system to prepare businesses for disruption.

The options available to support your business during an emergency or to operate from an alternate location depending on whether or not you are using our cloud solution or SIP trunking.

CLOUD
Services will continue to operate in the event of a power or internet failure at your office. The physical handsets might be down, but calls will continue to route through the system as usual with callers reaching your auto-attendant messages, user’s voicemails, and calls forwarded to external numbers

Emergency Auto-Attendant Greeting: There are two greeting options you can implement to inform callers about office closures or delayed openings. One, you can create a short message that plays before your regular auto-attendant. This can be done in the customer portal.  You can create a new audio file and upload the recording or you can choose the option to have the system call you at your GreenLink extension so that you can record it and save it.  The media file is then used to play before the regular auto-attendant greeting. Two, you can record a different auto-attendant greeting that can be available and switched on instantly to provide callers with a different set of options.

Call Routing / Forwarding: Using our mobile-ready customer portal, you can manage all aspects of call routing including forwarding your main number, forwarding individual extensions, and creating multi-follow configurations where call rings on external numbers in addition to your extensions. This can be handled in real-time as needs change.

Move your physical phone to a temporary location:  This is a possibility but it requires some planning including testing the phone at the temporary location prior to the emergency, taking an AC adapter, and notifying GreenLink of the address change so we can register it with 911. Most home routers will allow VoIP traffic but if the temporary location is another business, keep in mind that there is a chance that the network is not configured for VoIP and that network ports are closed so that location will need to make these adjustments.

1. Voicemail to Email: With Voicemail to Email enabled, voicemail messages are forwarded as an email attachment (Make sure you have the ability to retrieve emails remotely). The caller ID information is included in the email so calling back is a simple click from the email.
2. Fax to Email: This feature delivers faxes to either an email address or multiple email addresses so you can continue to receive faxes while away from the office. Faxes received by email can be easily forwarded to another team member or filed electronically.

SIP
In a SIP environment, GreenLink is only providing dial tone to your existing PBX. To prepare for this scenario, if you are using SIP registration as the way for your PBX to connect to GreenLink SIP Services, you can set up an automatic failover in case your PBX loses connection to GreenLink due to loss of power or internet connectivity.  Your calls can then be automatically forwarded to an external number.

There are three ways to set up these options: Contacting us, your IT provider (our partner), or via the GreenLink customer portal.

To learn more about GreenLink or discuss how these options apply to you, please contact us at info@greenlinknetworks.com or call is at 888-972-8802.

Additional Resources: Page from the ready.gov website that talks about other priorities directly related to being prepared for a hurricane