Use a Conference Bridge

Important Tips When Dialing into a Conference Bridge

• Do not put the conference bridge on hold unless your music on hold is disabled. Be aware that when you are on a conference call and you answer an incoming call, it places the conference bridge on hold disrupting the conversation. One remedy is to disable the outbound music on hold in the phone preferences under Expert. This is necessary for both external conference bridges and WebFones conference bridges.
• Leave your phone on mute during times when you are not speaking and keep it off speaker phone. This is especially true if you are on a mobile phone. Feedback from background noise will cause the call quality to degrade.
• If dialing into your own conference bridge using a VoIP phone, dial the bridge extension directly rather than dialing the outside number. Any quality of service issues will be amplified by calling out to the telephone carrier and back in. It isn’t necessary when you can connect directly.
• When connecting several internal phones to a conference bridge, be mindful of the additional bandwidth usage to support those calls. Make sure your network QoS is fully enabled to ensure that your call quality does not degrade with the simultaneous use of the internet bandwidth. If you have problems, stop using any high bandwidth applications during the call.
• Use a local phone number for conference bridges. We try to discourage the use of toll free numbers anyway because it is an added expense and callers don’t pay for the call either way. However, we have also sometimes found that calls from some mobile phone carriers to toll free numbers are not always as clear as local numbers. Those problems can be amplified on a conference bridge.