Dial *80 and an extension, and that desk phone answers on speaker by itself.
Dial *80 and a colleague's extension and their desk phone answers by itself, on speaker.
What it is for
"Your lunch is here." "Line two is for you." "Can you come to the front?" The ten-second message that does not deserve a ringing phone and a hello.
Dial *80 followed by the extension, such as *80102. Their phone plays a short warning tone, opens its speaker, and you are talking.
Manners built in
- It never interrupts. If they are on a call, or their phone is already ringing, you get a busy signal at once.
- It respects status. Someone set to away or busy is not disturbed.
- It never goes to voicemail. An intercom message left in a mailbox is just confusing.
- The warning tone always plays first, so nobody is listened to by surprise.
What rings and what does not
Desk phones answer by themselves. The web phone and the mobile app do not: they cannot answer on their own, and nobody wants a laptop that suddenly starts talking in a meeting.
Only from inside
Intercom can only be dialed from an extension. A caller from outside can never reach it, whatever they press.
How a phone knows
The call carries a standard marker asking the phone to answer by itself. Phone makers disagree about which marker they read, so the system sends both. Phones set up by link are also told to answer with a tone, microphone on, and never during another call.
In the log
Intercom calls appear in the call log with the code in front of the number, so they are easy to tell from ordinary calls.