--On Friday, January 09, 2004 10:11 PM -0600 Alan Andrews <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Fri, 2004-01-09 at 20:55, Ken Alker wrote:
Does * have the capability to screen calls?  IOW, if someone calls in
from  outside (ie. not a local extension), can * ask the calling party
to state  their name, record it, ring the recipient, play the caller's
name for the  recipient, then give the recipient the choice of answering
or forcing the  call to voice mail?

I thought that's what caller ID was for.

There are many cases where caller ID will not suffice:


1) many people share the same phone number (a family, or roommates)
2) a company where their entire group of phone numbers appears as one calling number (thus, you don't know who it is within the company that is calling)
3) someone calling from a number that isn't theirs (payphone, friend's house, borrowed cell, work cell, etc)
4) CallerID is blocked by caller
5) In my area caller ID is about $7.50/mo./line which makes it priced too high to be a justifiable expense for my company.


I find that callerID is only effective in about 25% of the cases (I have it at home). If you don't have callerID, automated call screening is the next best thing. In fact, I have nearly a 100% success rate with it, so it's better than callerID, IMHO. I use this feature on a Nortel mudular ICS. They refer to it as "screened transfer". It saves me from having to speak with sales people who make it past my employee barricade, or who figure out my direct extension. I'd guess it saves me an average of 20 minutes per day; not bad if you add it up.

/**************************************************************
Ken Alker         [EMAIL PROTECTED]            ham radio: KA6SDU
Impulse Internet Services               http://www.impulse.net
Santa Barbara,  San Luis Obispo,  Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange
T-3 / T-1 / ADSL / ISDN / 56K / web hosting / wireless / co-lo
***************************************************************/
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