MegaPath Voice Glossary

After Hours

A schedule used by the Auto Attendant after regular business hours. The administrator configures the After Hours Time Schedule in the Client Portal.

Auto Attendant

Automated attendant or receptionist that answers your Auto Attendant phone number and typically plays a customized greeting and menu options to callers. Auto Attendant can play the same greeting and menu options all day, every day, or it can be customized for holidays, business hours and after hours.

Auto Attendant Greeting

Recorded greeting that callers hear when they reach the Auto Attendant. There are two types of greetings: Automated and Personal. An Automated Greeting is generated by the system without personalization. Personal greetings can be added by using one of two methods: Direct recording using the CommPilot Voice Portal or uploading an audio file from an external source such as a computer. There are two greeting options: Business Hours and After Hours. Holiday schedules use the After Hours greeting.

Auto Attendant Schedule

Auto Attendants can be customized using Time Schedules. Available Time schedules are: All Day, Every Day; Business Hours; After Hours; and Holidays. The default schedule for the Auto Attendant is All Day, Every Day. If you do not create a Time schedule, the Auto Attendant will use the default. Time Schedules are configured by the administrator in the Client Portal.

Business Hours

A schedule used by the Auto Attendant during open hours. The administrator configures the Business Hours Time Schedule in the Client Portal.

CPE – Customer Premises Equipment, Customer-Provided Equipment

CPE generally refers to devices such as telephones, routers, switches, residential gateways, set-top boxes, fixed mobile convergence products, home networking adaptors, and internet access gateways that enable consumers to access services from Communications Service Providers and distribute those services via a LAN (Local Area Network).

Client Portal (Fusion Connect Client Portal)

Self-service administration portal used by administrators to manage account, billing, services (including adding new and upgrading services), add new portal users and view and manage support tickets.

Download Speed

The capacity of information that can be received by your computer from the Internet.

Email a Copy

A feature in Voice Manager that enables voice and fax messages to be emailed to a user. To learn how to configure Email a Copy, see How To Use Features > Voice Manager.

Ethernet

A family of computer networking technologies for LANs. The Ethernet standards include several wiring and signaling variants of the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) physical layer in use with Ethernet.

Firewall

A software- or hardware-based network security system that controls the incoming and outgoing network traffic based on an applied rule set. A firewall establishes a barrier between a trusted, secure internal network and another network (e.g., the Internet) that is not assumed to be secure and trusted.

Holiday Schedule

Used by the Auto Attendant during holiday hours. The administrator configures the Holiday Schedule in the Client Portal.

Hunt Group

Method of distributing phone calls from a single telephone number to a group of several phone lines allowing for calls to distributed among users or agents.

Hunt Group – Circular

Incoming calls hunt through agents in the order they appear in the list, starting with the agent following the last agent to receive a call. When the search reaches the end of the list, it loops back to the top and continues until it has tried all agents.

Hunt Group – Regular

Incoming calls hunt through agents in the order they appear in the list, starting from the top each time.

Hunt Group – Simultaneous Ring

Incoming calls alert all agents at the same time. The first agent to answer handles the call.

Hunt Group – Weighted Call Distribution

Incoming calls are assigned to idle agents based on percentages determined by the administrator on the Hunt Group Profile – Weighted Call Distribution page.

Hunt Group – Uniform

Incoming calls hunt through all agents in order, starting with the agent who has been idle the longest and ending with the agent who most recently answered a call.

Internet

A global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link several billion devices worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies.

Jitter

The variation over time of the latency across a network. For voice calls, high jitter values can cause voice packets to be delivered out of order, resulting in echoes or talk-over effects.

Local Area Network (LAN)

A computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building using network media. The LAN typically connects to a modem, which connects your network to the Internet.

Latency

The time it takes for a packet of data to make a round trip between two designated points. Delays in conversation or periods of silence on voice calls, or websites that load slowly, are often caused by latency.

Modem

A device that connects to the data connection provided by your Internet service provider.

Mean Opinion Score (MOS)

A numerical score of the perceived quality of a voice call.

Packet Loss

Occurs when data units, or packets, fail to reach their destination; often causes voice calls to sound choppy.

Power over Ethernet (PoE)

Describes any of several standardized or ad-hoc systems that pass electrical power along with data on Ethernet cabling. This allows a single cable to provide both data connection and electrical power to devices.

Quality of Service (QoS)

The overall performance of a telephony or computer network, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitatively measure quality of service, several related aspects of the network service are often considered, such as error rates, bandwidth, throughput, transmission delay, availability, jitter, etc.

Router

A device that routes or splits your Internet connection among multiple devices. A router is an “intelligent” device. It can divide your connection differently depending on how it is configured. Routers commonly have four ports to allow up to four separate device connections.

Switch

A pass-through device that splits your Internet connection among multiple devices. Switches are capable of extending your network to accommodate an additional 4 to 24 devices.

Upload Speed

The capacity of information that can be sent by your computer to the Internet.

Visual Voicemail (Voicemail Transcription)

Transcription of voice messages into text. To learn how to configure voicemail transcription, go to How To Use Features > Voicemail .

Voice Communications Toolbar

Interface for configuring and controlling your phone service that integrates with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Outlook. Once services are configured in the toolbar, many of them can be used or modified with a single click of the mouse.

Voice Manager

A user-level, web-based mobility tool that allows you to configure your phone service on the fly, make outbound calls, change your location, and access messages and call logs.

Voice Project Manager

Primary MegaPath point of contact for managing the installation of voice services.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)

Methodology and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The term Internet telephony specifically refers to the provisioning of communications services (voice, fax, short message service, voice-messaging) over the public Internet, rather than via the public switched telephone network (PSTN).