Introduction

The VIP Portal for Users is a web-based tool that is available to be used to access your own settings including messages (voicemail, SMS, and fax), add personal contacts, customize your own answering rules, and time frames, edit your physical phone settings, music on hold options, and your call history for your extension.

This guide will guide you through navigating the VIP Portal for Users and Agents and the options included.

For a video demonstration:

Home

The Home screen displays a quick at-a-glance view of the other areas of the portal including New Voicemail Messages, Active Answering Rule, Active Phones, and Recent Call History. 

Call Center

This option will only be available if you have a Call Center Agent user license.

The Call Center section shows your current statistics, call history, and any queues that you are assigned to with the option to login/logout of all queues or specific queues. To logout using a reason, select the arrow next to the status and choose a reason for logging out.

Messages

The Message Center is where you can manage voicemails, chat/SMS messages, and voicemail settings which are grouped into three tabs:

1. Voicemail Tab: this tab shows any new voicemail messages that you have received. These messages can be listened to directly from this tab. You can access any saved messages by selecting the drop-down menu. 

2. Chat Tab: this tab shows any internal messages with other users in your domain. If you have been granted access to send SMS messages to external phone numbers, you can read and send messages from this tab as well. For more information on SMS, please see VIP SMS.
3. Settings Tab: this tab provides customization options for your voicemail.
   1. Enable Voicemail: Uncheck the box to turn off your voicemail.
   2. Options: Provides options for sorting your voicemail.
   3. Operator Forward: You can direct a caller that gets your voicemail to press “0” to be forwarded to another user. Simply enter the extension that they can be forwarded to.
   4. Copy to extension(s): If you would like your voicemails to be copied to another user’s voicemail, enter the name or extension you would like this to happen for. NOTE: This simply copies the voicemail to another user, but it does NOT mirror the actions that someone takes with that voicemail. If you delete the voicemail, it does NOT delete the voicemail in another user’s voicemail box.
   5. Voicemail Transcription: enable this option if you would like your voicemails transcribed so you can read them.
   6. Options: You can receive an email when your mailbox is full or if you have missed a call.
   7. Voicemail Greeting: To add a new voicemail greeting from the VIP Portal:
      1. Select the “Manage” button.
      2. Select “Add Greeting” at the bottom of the window.
      3. Select the method you would like to use to add your new greeting:
         1. Text-To-Speech: Allows you to type in your message and select a voice inflection that will read your message.
         2. Upload: Allows you to upload a recording that you may have from the past.
         3. Record: Allows you to specify where you would like to be called to record your message.
      4. Select “Save” to add your greeting. You can delete any old messages that you do not need.
   8. Recorded Name: allows you to use the record, text-to-speech, and upload methods to record your name if you do not want to add a voicemail greeting.
   9. Email Notifications: This option sends you an email notification if you receive a new voicemail. This can be set to automatically delete the voicemail from your inbox once it has been sent to your email inbox.

Fax

If your organization utilizes Crexendo for your faxing needs, you can send/receive/read faxes through the VIP Portal and email. For more information on faxing, please see VIP Fax Guide.

Contacts

The Contact section of the portal is a collection of all internal contacts and any personal contacts that you add to your contacts. 

To filter through your contacts, simply select the drop-down menu and choose the category you would like to see which includes: All contacts, Favorites, Shared, My Contacts, Coworkers, Departments, Sites, Available, Busy, or Offline.

Internal contacts are marked with colored dots:

• Green: They are available for a call
• Red: They are not available for a call
• Blue: They can receive a chat message which means they are logged in to the portal, web phone, or mobile app.

To Add a New Contact:

1. Select “Add Contact” on the upper right side of the screen which will open a new window.
2. Enter in as much information as you would like to add and select “Save”.

Time Frames

Time Frames allow you to set periods of time that you want the Crexendo environment to pay attention to such as vacations, recurring meetings, or emergency leave.

NOTE: Specifying time frames only makes the system aware of these periods. A time frame (by itself) does not cause the system to perform any actions or respond to certain events (such as phone call) during these periods. Time Frames are closely related to and work together with Answering Rules where you direct the system to perform actions.

To Create a New Answering Rule:

1. From the VIP Portal, select “Add Time Frame”.
2. Select “Add Time Frame” at the top right side of the screen.
3. Name the time frame so that you can recognize it such as Weekly Team Meeting.
4. Select when you would like this time frame to take place:
   1. Always: this would be always in affect unless you deactivate it.
   2. Days of the week and times: This would be to schedule a recurring weekly schedule such as meetings, personal business hours, half day Fridays, etc. A scheduler will open to set that schedule accordingly.

c. Specific dates or ranges: This option would be for vacations, appointments, etc. When selected, a scheduler option will appear to schedule one or several days to apply to the time frame.

5. To choose what your calls do when the time frame occurs, add an answering rule for the time frame.

Answering Rules

Answering Rules is where you tell the system what to do during a particular time frame when any of your devices receives a call. 

• Answering Rules take on the name of the time frame they are attached to. For example, the “Business Hours” answering rule is based on the “Business Hours” time frame.
• Once the time frame is chosen, you can select what actions should be performed such as go to voicemail, forward to a user, etc.

To Create a New Answering Rule

1. From the VIP Portal, select “Answering Rules”.
2. Select “Add Rule” at the top right side of the screen.

3. Select the time frame that you want to apply the rule to from the drop-down menu.

4. Select what you want the call to do when the time frame is active such as: Do Not Disturb, Call Forwarding (to your voicemail, to an outside phone number, or to another user), or which phone to ring such as your mobile app only or desk phone only.
5. Select “Save” to complete your answering rule.

Phones

The Phones section is where all devices that are registered to you are displayed. 

If you are using a desk phone, you can edit the line buttons using “SNAPbuilder” which can be opened by selecting the “gear” icon next to the phone. For more information on editing your phone’s buttons, see the SNAPbuilder guide.

Music on Hold

This section allows you as a user to set specific music or messages that can be played when you place a caller on hold. Most of the time, music on hold is set at the domain level and all other users use whatever has been set by the Office Manager. If you would like to add your own hold music, please speak with your office manager first. 

For instructions on how to add your own hold music or messages, please see the guide for Music on Hold.

Call History

The Call History section of the portal provides a record of all incoming and outgoing calls associated with your extension. The portal will automatically display the last three days of calls, but you can filter for specific dates, numbers, incoming/outgoing, etc.

To Filter Your Call History:

1. Select “Filter” from the top left side of the Call History page.
2. Select the date or dates you would like to see and any other information including Caller Number, Dialed Number, or Call Type.

3. Select “Filter” to run the search.

Note: If you are a call center agent that receives calls through a call queue, those calls will NOT appear in your call history. Those calls will show in the supervisor’s call queue report.

To Block SPAM or ROBO Calls:

If you would like to block a SPAM or Robocall number from being able to call you:

1. Select the “Blocked Numbers” button.

2. Enter the number into the blank and press the “+” button.

3. You can also block a number from the Call Details section by selecting the Block Call icon.