A phone system for your team

A team or organization space turns Open Lounge Phone into a small office phone system: everyone gets a short extension, callers reach a ring group like “Front desk” or “Support”, and admins see the call log. Homes (families and kids’ phones) don’t change. There’s still no connection to the regular phone network — people reach you by extension, by your address you@your.server, or as a connection.

Start a team

In the companion app, Add a household → choose Team or Organization. You’re its owner. Invite people from People: a member (in the directory, can call and be called) or, as the owner, an admin (can also manage people, extensions, ring groups and hours). Only the owner makes or removes admins.

The directory and extensions

Open Directory. Everyone in the space sees the people, desk phones, rooms and ring groups, with their extensions, and can search by name, address or number. Type a number under Dial an extension and press Call.

Admins hand out numbers under Admin → Extensions: 2 to 6 digits, e.g. 201 for a person, 210 for the kitchen’s Lounge phone, 250 for the standup room.

On a phone: press MENU, then 6 Dial ext, type the digits (BACK deletes one) and press MENU to dial. The phone says the numbers as you type and tells you if there’s no such extension.

Ring groups

Admin → Ring groups → New ring group: a name, its extension, its members, and how it rings:

• Everyone at once — the first to pick up takes it;
• One after another — in the order you ticked them, each for the ring time you set;
• Take turns (round robin) — like one after another, but each call starts with the next person.

Someone who isn’t taking calls or is already on a call is skipped, and declining only stops your own phone ringing. If nobody answers, the caller can leave a message in the group’s shared voicemail box.

Business hours

Admin → Business hours: the days and times the space is open. A ring group can have its own. Outside those hours a call to a group goes to its voicemail box — or, if you choose, to another group (say, “Night line”) or to one person. A call is forwarded only once, so it never bounces around. Calls to a person always follow that person’s own “taking calls” switch.

Shared voicemail

Messages for a ring group show up in the Voicemail tab of each of its members (and the admins), marked “in Support’s shared box”. The first person who plays one marks it heard by them, so nobody calls the same customer back twice.

Transferring calls

Press Transfer during a call and pick a person, or type an extension. In a team or organization you can transfer anyone — even a caller from another household or another server — to your own space’s people, phones, ring groups and extensions. Their server hands the call over. (A kids’ phone is never transferred: its own server ends the call instead.)

Call log and audit trail

Admins find Admin → Call log (every call in the space, with Export CSV) and Admin → Audit trail, also under Settings → Changes (who changed what: extensions, groups, hours, roles, invites, phones, privacy, the space’s name and time zone; never what anyone said or wrote). Both are kept as long as the space’s history setting (Privacy). The owner and admins can rename the space and change its time zone under Settings; business hours follow.

More detail: Team and org spaces.