Co lines-These are the incoming phone lines from your local telephone company.

Extensions-Stations-These are the actual telephones. They are extensions of the business phone system. They look like telephones and work like telephones, But only work with the control unit and will not work if they are plugged into a regular phone line from the telephone company. So, if you ever move, Don't forget to call us to relocate your phone system.

Voice Mail-Auto Attendant- voice mail systems with the auto attendant is like having a receptionist 24 hours a day without paying labor costs. The auto attendant is an answering service that answers incoming calls with a company greeting, plays a list of options to a caller, and transfers calls to the different departments, then to mail boxes if that extension is not answered, or back to a main directory. The auto attendant can be turned off during business hours and answered manually.  The person answering the call can transfer calls to the different departments and mail boxes. The voice mail system is a separate unit from the phone system, it is wired into an extension port on the  phone system and is programmed to answer after a determined amount of rings.   Voice mail comes in different sizes 2 port,4 port, 6 port and up,  it depends on the amount of incoming traffic your company has.

Ports: The term port means circuit. For instance, a 2 "Port" voice mail system has 2 circuits to handle call traffic. The number of ports on a voice mail system is directly related to the number of users that can be in voice mail at the same time. The term "port" is used when describing a phone system, it refers to the combined number of lines and extensions.

Things to think about before purchasing a business phone system.

Many companies today have purchased telephone equipment that was just right in the beginning, only to find out that as the company grew their phone system could not.   Estimating your future growth today may not cause you problems in your business phone system later. These are questions you need to consider when purchasing a business phone system.

What is the maximum number of phones that I can have on my business phone system?  
What is the maximum number of phone lines (co lines) for my phone system? 
Can I add phone equipment to increase the number of phones or phone lines?  
Can I add features to my business phone system such as voicemail?

          "Well I need 4 phones so I must need 4 lines, right?"

NO!    Picking phone lines really depends on the number of calls you receive in a day, how many phones lines will be used at the same time. If you were running a sales office and you had 4 phone lines with 4 sales people and they were all on thephone, new callers would get a busy signal.  You would more likely need 6 to 8 phone lines.   A fax lines can be shared with the credit card terminal, shipping terminal or anything else, But not at the same time.

Hunt Group, Rotary Lines- Meaning if line 1 is busy it will roll over to line 2 an on down to your last line. Don't put the fax line in the hunt group, Because if all lines are busy the next caller will get the fax machine. "Not good for business."
When ordering your CO lines from your local telephone company order them in a hunt group, i.e.  Ordering 6 lines, put 4 in the hunt group 1 for the fax and 1 for a modem or 5 in the hunt group and share 1 line for the fax and the modem.