Stupid phone trick #7 – How to make iPhone calls from my ShoreTel handset!
February 16th, 2011
Yeah, I am sure you were just dying to know how to call your iPhone and have your ShoreTel phone ring?  Better yet, pick up your ShoreTel handset and make a call out your iPhone?    Actually, it is a useful integration and one that I recently had the opportunity to implement.   Many carriers have plans in which you can  call any of your “family members” without racking up minutes.   This is useful when calling from cell phone to cell phone, but how useful is it for the office?   If you have a field sales force running around the market with cell phones, and you as manager need to call them frequently, you might not always be on your cell phone!  This means that each time you call them, using your office phone system, you are paying full fare for the call whatever that might be. It is very possible to Integrate your cell phone with your ShoreTel phone system in a way that enables you to enjoy the benefits of both systems.    You can link your iPhone to ShoreTel such that when someone calls your cell phone, your ShoreTel desktop phone will ring.  Answering the ShoreTel handset, cuts you through to your cellular caller. (Yes, your ShoreTel Communicator does a screen pop with the Caller ID of the Cellular caller).  Likewise you can you can initiate a call on your ShoreTel handset and direct it out your cellular network.  There have been a number of solutions in the market for putting cellular gateways on your PBX.  Generally they have the advantage of making the cellular access available to everyone on the phone system. They also have the disadvantage of being fairly pricy! The solution we implemented can be described as a black box that uses blue tooth technology to couple your office handset to your favorite cell phone.   Drop me line and I will send you the solution and you to can do stupid phone tricks!  Drvoip@drvoip.com