I’m on record saying Call Park is my favourite PABX feature, and its great that we have it available to us in Skype for Business.

“Parking” a call transfers it off to a “holding bay” where the caller hears MOH until such time as someone retrieves the call. If they’re left waiting too long a timeout returns it to the party who parked it.

In SfB you initiate the process by clicking Transfer, then selecting “Park the call”. All going well the call vanishes to places unknown and is replaced with a message to say “the call is parked”, and a special “Orbit” number you – or anyone – can dial to retrieve it.

Its utility eclipses that of a simple call transfer when you don’t actually know where you need to transfer the call to, or if you want to securely (or secretly) manage the process. It’s the perfect answer for a range of scenarios:

• The attendant can park a call for someone and then over the Public Address system announce who the call’s for and at what call park “Orbit” number they’ll find it.
• In the absence of a PA system anyone can park a call for someone, jot the Orbit number on a post-it note and personally seek out the recipient, thrusting the retrieval code into their hand.
• It’s a more relaxed approach to an “announced (supervised) transfer”: park the call, IM the recipient and type the park location into the IM. When they’re composed and ready to take the call they retrieve it from where it’s parked.
• Staff in open-office environments can use it to easily move a sensitive call from their shared workspace to the privacy of a meeting room. The advantage of Call Park over Transfer in this scenario is that they need not know the name of a nearby room or even if it’s occupied: just park the call and wander around until you find a safe space.

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