#1 2009-01-21 17:50:01

**_Terry_at_RefinedData_com_**

Phone Bridge Enhancements

When starting a phone-based audio conference, users can only enter a Direct Dial number in the window that pops up inside the meeting. Unless you enter your cell phone or home phone number, chances are your business phone system features an automated attendant. (if there's a live attendant you're completely out of luck).

It would make more sense to allow users to enter an extension number in a separate field or a list of digits (and commas for pauses) that would allow the phone bridge to direct the inbound call appropriately.

This should be fairly trivial to implement and would make life a lot easier for hosts who currently have to waste a lot of time trying to match all of the "Unknown Caller" records with named attendees.

It would also be nice to let the Host hide the dialler windows that pop up when the conference is started. Currently, unlike other pods, hosts cannot control the visibility of this window. Users who dial in manually are often very confused by the Phone Conference window (since they are often already in the conference) and many think they're supposed to enter their phone number again. Our clients often have to create an entire process around what to tell users about dialing in to the call.

The previous version of Connect would show the dial-in phone number to hosts when they simply moused over the "Unknown Caller". This made it easier to differentiate the caller in Chicago from the one in New York based on the Area Code. Can we get this feature back? Why did it go away?

It would even be nice (and not difficult to build) to have a reverse lookup on the Area Code and Exchange (as a minimum) so that the mouseover showed not only the caller's phone number but also their City. This database is easily available online.