Phones, Phones. . .And Phones

Like many companies, my company uses Microsoft Skype as our conference software. It’s a very convenient and cost effective method for making calls. In fact, most “phone calls” between employees are Skype calls.

When we have outage conference calls, we hold them on Skype. When we have project meetings, we hold them on Skype. When we have a second outage conference call, we. . .um. When we have calls from executives wanting an update on our multiple outages. . .yeah. . .so. . . When we have client calls where they want an update on the status of our outages. . .and our missed project calls. . .yeah, that’s not gonna work.

I’m not often doublebooked. Most often it’s when we have an outage. I’m on an internal conference bridge and I’m also on a client based conference bridge. Occasionally, I’ll have a project meeting that I have to dial into while also on an outage.

Skype has an annoying “feature.” You cannot be connected to multiple Skype bridges. Well, that’s not entirely true. Skype allows you to talk, text and share screens. However, if you are on a Skype call and you join another Skype call, the program decides that you should suspend the first call.

But, you can “quit” the voice portion of a call and still stay logged into the chat and screen sharing portion. That was my situation today. We had two outage bridges going. And I had a project meeting. I joined the Skypecall for the outage bridge I was planning to run. The sound came through my headset. On the rest of the calls, I joined the chat portion and then then dialed in my desk phone into one and put it on speaker phone with the microphone muted. I dialed into the project meeting on my cell phone and used an attached headset. One headset in one ear, the other headset in the other ear.

That was pretty much my day. Of course I also had email, texting an chat that were all active as well.

I work for a communication company. Today, I felt like I was a communication company.

Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.

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