| Forwarding using my 3 way calling feature: Three way calling is a feature, you order through the phone company, that allows you to add a third party to an existing call. This, effectively, permits Call Soft and the other two parties (your caller and you) to speak together in a three-way conference. In other words Call Soft can patch the caller and you together. When you select this option an edit box will appear asking you for the number you want to forward the call to. Here is the scenario: Someone calls, the greeting is played e.g. something like "your call is being forwarded". Call Soft accesses the 3 way calling feature, dials your number, then switches back connecting the caller directly to you.
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| Use Silence Detection
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| Call Soft also needs to know when the call has ended so that it can hang up and begin listening for calls again. This seems like a simple thing to do but some modems fail to do this. So the alternative is to use silence detection. This will cause Call Soft to eavesdrop on your conversation and when it detects a period of silence (15 seconds) it will hang up.
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| Hangup after dialing
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| If you want Call Soft to hangup after forwarding the call check this option. However, you only want to do this if your call forwarding service allows it. Doing this with most services will terminate the forwarded call.
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| Test call forwarding using a speed dial button first:
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| Call Soft does not do anything special when forwarding the call. It simply flashes the line, dials a number then flashes back. You can test to see if this works by creating a speed dial button that emulates forwarding a call. Set the speed dial number to !,number,! where ! flashes the line, the commas pause for 1 second and "number" is the number to forward the call to.
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| For example !,7135551212,!
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| This is the exact way Call Soft will do it.
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| To test it make a call to someone, sometime after they answer click the speed dial button you just created.
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| If you have trouble using this feature:
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| 1. | We have found some modems will not depress the hook switch (flash) long enough to access the second line. There is a way to adjust this time but note it did not work on all modems. (As of this writing we only had trouble using this feature with the Zoom 3049C.) Get the properties of your modem via the phone and modems icon in Control Panel and find where you can specify an extra initialization string or command and enter S29=70
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| 70 can be any number between 0 and 255 and specifies in the time in 10ms to depress the hook switch e.g. 70*10 = 700ms or 7/10 of a second.
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| 2 | Call Soft also might begin dialing the number before the second line has been accessed. If this happens simply add a comma or two prior to the number to forward the call to. For example: ",713-555-1212" Each comma will pause for 1 second. You must be careful though, adding too much time will cause a dial tone for an extended period of time and will cause the modem to think the caller has hung up. This, of course, will cause the modem to hang up. There is nothing Call Soft can do about this because, in general, voice modems are not smart enough to know your trying to access a second line so be careful. You also might have to add some commas after the number for example 7135551212,,,,. We have found some 3 way calling systems like Vonage will not merge the two calls until the remote party answers.
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| 3 | If the number your forwarding the call to is busy you will run into trouble. The same scenario as item 2 happens, the modem does not know your trying to forward the call and believes the call needs to end because it hears a busy signal. So you might want to warn your callers of this in your greeting.
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| Note: You can also forward a call via one of the remote options.
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| See Also:
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| Mailbox Properties General Tab
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| Speed Dial Buttons
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