Hoteling Guest

Description

Hoteling allows Masergy users to work in an open environment, such as unassigned work stations for a period of time. Today I sit here, tomorrow I sit over there and the next day I’m working from home. Hoteling consists of two separate services, Hoteling Host and Hoteling Guest. The first service, Hoteling Host, is used to designate a particular user as a host allowing other users with the Hoteling Guest service assigned, to associate their service profile with this user’s device.

The second service, Hoteling Guest, is used to allow a user to associate the user’s service profile with a user’s device that has the Hoteling Host service assigned. This functionality is typically used for transient employees. For example, an enterprise can establish visitor cubicles with a phone. The user account associated with this phone would have the Host service assigned. Salespersons, with the guest service assigned and using the cubicle, can associate their service profiles with the phone in the cubicle while they are working in the office.

Subscribers with Hoteling Guest assigned associate themselves with a station via the web portal or the voice portal. From the web portal, users select an idle host and associate their service profiles with this host. From the voice portal, users dial in from the host phones they wish to associate their service profiles with. After entering their identities and passwords, they invoke the Hoteling menu and can associate their service profiles with the host phone. Hoteling allows users to associate their service profiles with a different device. When the Hoteling Guest is associated with a station and originates a call, it appears as if the guest originated the call from their own phone.

This service is assigned to Masergy users that need Hoteling functionality, that is, they need their services available from different locations. Typically, such users identify actual persons in an organization, who travel and need their service profile to execute for calls to/from different devices in different locations. Various settings control how this particular guest account behaves when associated with a Hoteling Guest user account, via the Hoteling Guest service. These settings are as follows:

On/Off – This service can be active or inactive. If inactive, this user cannot be associated with a host user account. If this guest user is associated with a host account, and the service is disabled, then this user is forcibly disassociated.

Association Time – The association time can be configured by user-level users and above. This setting is used to set a timer that will automatically disassociate the guest from the host when the timer expires. The value for the timeout must be greater than 0 and less than the association time limit configured on the host.

Associated Host Indicator – This will show the host (if any) that this guest is associated with.</>

Host Association – This service lists all host user accounts where the user is allowed to access the host, determined via the host’s access indicator (group, enterprise). A guest user uses this list to choose a host to associate with. Search capability exists to filter available hosts to associate with. The list of available hosts can be filtered by Last Name, First Name, or Department. This allows for easy searching across large enterprises.

How to

Association and Disassociation via Personal Web Portal – Associating a guest with a host via the web pages is accomplished via the Hoteling Guest service configuration portal. A guest user or administrator navigates to the Hoteling Guest pages and selects a host user from the list of available hosts. Available hosts are Hoteling Host user accounts that are active, not associated with other guest users. Disassociating a guest from a host is accomplished from the same web pages.

Disassociate A Guest

  1. Log into the web portal.
  2. Click “Call Control” section in the left navigation panel.
  3. Click Hoteling guest.
  4. Click On
  5. Click Apply if the service is Off.
  6. Click Search on the right side.
  7. Click on the station or host you’d like to use.
  8. Click the arrow to move this host name from the left column to the right column.
  9. Click OK.
  10. The default state for Hoteling Guest is “Off”.

Association and Disassociation via Voice Portal

Associating a guest with a host via the voice portal is accomplished via the guest user’s voice portal. The “Access Hoteling” option is only available if all conditions are met:

  • The voice portal is accessed by a user account with the Hoteling Guest service assigned.
  • The voice portal is accessed from the station you’d like to use
  • The guest user must log into the voice portal using the user’s credentials (user ID/password).

Depending on whether the guest user is already associated with the host device or not, the guest user dials in to the voice portal and is prompted to enter a password or needs to dial the * key to enter his or her extension.

From the Hoteling options menu, a user can associate, disassociate, or check the host’s status.

  1. From the main menu, press 7 to change your hoteling options.
  2. To check the status. Press 1.
  3. To associate with this host Press 2.
  4. To disassociate with this host press 3.

Once an association is made, a user chooses a station; calls made to and from the guest, use the guest service profile and the host’s device. Calls initiated via the call control clients by the guest will use the host’s device. Calls made to the actual station user account trigger a not-reachable condition, and services configured on the host’s service profile will execute. This is similar to the host having no assigned primary device.

Once an association is made, a user chooses a station; calls made to and from the guest, use the guest service profile and the host’s device. Calls initiated via the call control clients by the guest will use the host’s device. Calls made to the actual station user account trigger a not-reachable condition, and services configured on the host’s service profile will execute. This is similar to the host having no assigned primary device.

If you have Shared Call Appearance, all appearances will be disabled while you are hoteled in. All nonemergency calls placed from the disabled devices (the device belonging to the guest that is now actually using the host’s device) will be rejected. Emergency calls made from the guest user’s device will not be blocked.

All non-emergency calls made by the guest from the host’s device will use the CLID of the guest. Emergency calls made by the guest from the host’s device will use the CLID of the host user. This is required so that the emergency personnel will have the true location of the guest.

Once a guest is disassociated from a host, the host user is free to accept other associations. The guest user’s primary device now reverts back to the user’s original device, and the host user’s device is re-associated with the host user account. If there are any active calls up while a disassociation occurs, those calls are allowed to complete normally.

If the primary end point is removed from a host user when there is a host-guest association, then the guest is automatically disassociated from the host.