1. Podium
  2. Phones
  3. Phones Overview

What Can Our Phones Do?

Inbound Calls

Your phone will light up when you receive a call you can either 

  1. Pick up the receiver and it will answer it automatically
  2. Or select accept and it will start the call via speaker
  3. Decline the call. Doing so will only decline the call on your phone; if other phones are ringing, they will continue to ring.

Outbound Calls

To make an outbound call you will either 

  1. Manually dial the customer's number on the phone 
  2. Log into Podium. Select the call button in the contact. If you’re using one of our softphones, the call will start immediately as long as you’ve enabled microphone access. If you’re using one of our desk phones, when you select call in Podium, the call will first ring on your Podium phone once you answer it, then call the customer's number.                                                                                              2b.png

Dial Emergency Services  

If you have verified your E911 number, when you call 911 it will automatically notify emergency services of your configured address.  You can view and modify your emergency address on the Settings page under Voice.

See Calls in Podium 

On your Podium contacts, you can see a variety of events related to Voice: 

  • Completed Calls
  • Missed calls
  • Voicemails

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Call Holds 

When on an active call, you can either press the Hold button (this button has a pause icon) or, if possible, tap Hold on the phone screen. This puts the phone on hold only for your phone. 

Call Transfers

Podium Voice supports two types of transfers: attended and unattended transfers.

  • An attended transfer will place the call on hold, ring out to the line you’re transferring to, and start a call with it so you can speak with the line to alert them of the reason for the call, and then transfer the call.
  • An unattended transfer will transfer the call to the other line immediately. There will not be an opportunity for you to speak with the other line you are transferring the call to, and the call will immediately ring on their phone when it has been transferred. 

How to do an attended transfer

If you’re using the Grandstream GXV3350 phone:

  1. During the active call, tap on the Transfer button to bring up the transfer screen.
  2. Select transfer mode as Attended by tapping on the mode selection area
  3. Enter the transfer target number (or select from your contacts or previous calls), and press the Transfer soft key on the right.
  4. Before the transfer target answers the call, GXV3350 hears the ringback tone, and the touchscreen prompts are shown below. You can tap on Cancel to cancel the transfer, tap on End, or hang up the call to complete the call transfer.

If you’re using the Grandstream GRP2615 phone:

  1. During the first active call, press TRANSFER. 
  2. A new line will be brought up, and the first call will be automatically placed on hold; 
  3. Dial the number and press the AttTrnf soft key to make a second call. 
  4. Press TRANSFER again. The call will be transferred. 

Video walkthrough on how to do an attended transfer on the GRP2615: Attended Transfer on a Grandstream GRP2615

How to do an unattended transfer

If you’re using the Grandstream GXV3350 phone:

 

When transferring calls, you are not able to transfer to an external number, only internal extensions. 

  • On an active call, you will select the Transfer hard button (in the picture below, it is number 9). You will then scroll down on the touch screen and select the extension you wish to transfer to. 
  • When you select the extension, it will send it automatically to that phone to pick up.

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Shared Voicemail Inbox: 

In your Podium Inbox, you can view and playback the audio from any voicemail you have received to your business number. You can also view a transcript of the voicemail audio (transcriptions can take a few minutes to process). Note: voicemail playback is only possible in the Podium inbox and not on the phones themselves.

Call groups and call routing

You’re able to set up your call routing by using Call Groups in Podium. A Call Group is a group of phones that ring together; you may consider setting up Call Groups to mirror different teams or departments within your business (e.g., Front Desk call group, Sales call group). The primary call group is the group of phones that ring first once an inbound call comes in. Visit our article Setting up Call Groups and Routing to go into more detail.

 

After-hours call forwarding

After-hours call forwarding allows you to configure rules for what happens when one of your customers calls your Podium phone number outside your configured business hours or on holiday. This can be a great way to ensure your customers have a frustration-free experience reaching out to you.

For more information, reference our Help Center article.

Extensions

Every desk phone used in your business is equipped with its own extension. You can also create extensions for call groups to allow customers to dial a group of phones directly. To identify your phone’s extension, log into Podium and click the phone icon in the top navigation bar.

If you want to change the extensions used by your phones, please contact Podium support.

Dial another extension directly

You can call another Podium phone in your business directly by dialing their extension. Any other phone configured in your location is automatically added to your phone as a Contact. To refresh the Contacts on your phone, simply reboot the phone.

Podium Caller ID 

Setting up inbound caller ID view this Help Center article 

Setting up your voicemail

To set up your Voicemail view this Help Center article 

Setting up your welcome greeting

To set up your voicemail view this Help Center article

Call logs

You can view all calls that have come into your business by logging into Podium and clicking the left-side Calls menu option on the left side. This will show all inbound calls, outbound calls, and voicemails. 

Allowing customers to dial phones or groups directly

Voice supports a lightweight “phone tree” by configuring extensions for phones or groups of phones and updating your welcome greeting to direct callers to dial those extensions. To do so:

 

  1. Visit Settings > Voice > Call Groups
  2. Create a Call Group for each group you want to be directly dialable and assign each call group an extension
  3. Visit General Settings in the Voice menu and upload a custom call greeting that instructs the end callers on which options to press. Each extension should be preceded by a *. 

Softphone Beta

​​​​​​​Voice customers can now make outbound calls from their Podium account on the web browser or using the Podium mobile app. If you would like to get on the waitlist for the Softphone beta, you can join the waitlist here: https://www.podium.com/voice/

How to use the web softphone:

  1. Log into Podium
  2. Next to contact, select the call button
  3. It will trigger a call to the customer's number. Once the customer answers, you can talk with the customer from your browser. 

Note: You cannot receive inbound calls to the web browser at this time.