Like many of our customers, we’re following the news surrounding the Coronavirus outbreak very closely.
As a supplier of critical communications infrastructure to many businesses, we wanted to keep our customers and partners aware of what we’re doing to make our services as resilient as possible, and give you useful advice on how to configure your phone systems to enable easy remote working – if you choose to do so.
We have a dedicated pages for our own network status and any updates from our suppliers. We’ll be updating these pages several times a day.
What we’re doing to keep our services up and running
We’ve already taken steps to ensure that our products, services and support remain functional if – as a business – we need to change where our employees are physically located. We have complex business continuity and disaster recovery plans in place which we have repeatedly tested for a variety of scenarios.
As a cloud services provider, you should not notice a difference to the performance of the products and services we provide. We will continue to support you as valued customers throughout any business continuity and disaster recovery scenarios that may be presented.
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How to configure our products to help you prepare for remote working
If you’re already a user of our VoIP services, whether Wave, 3CX or our other VoIP products, you’ll know that you can use them wherever you are, provided you have an internet connection and a compatible device, whether a handset, computer or mobile device.
So, how should you configure Gradwell services if you’re required to self-isolate or your business decides to enforce remote working?
Call Diverts
These are an easy way to ensure employees can take every call, typically involving diverting calls from an office phone to your mobile. So, if someone calls your office phone, they’ll be sent through to your mobile without it having to be done manually. See below for links to guidance for each of our products.
Hunt groups
You can create and customise hunt groups which will help if members of your business are unavailable. Rather than the phone call being distributed to them, you can customise your hunt group to exempt their extension number and go to the next person in the sequence. You can create hunt groups through your control panel or the Wave dashboard. Read step by step guides below.
Calendar routing
If your office has to close for longer than a few days, you may wish to use a calendar router. This will divert your calls for a set period of time. You can also amend your working hours through calendar routing, so you’re only contacted at certain days and times.
Softphone app
Want to answer or call from your business number on any device without diverting? Lots of our customers use a softphone. We offer softphone support via browsers on desktop devices and apps on Android and iOS mobile devices. You can install a softphone with 3CX or Wave.
High call volumes & monitoring
We are currently receiving high volumes of calls from customers needing guidance about remote working and our services. If you need help getting Gradwell products set up effectively for remote working, we have put together comprehensive guides to help you with this.
How to configure your VoIP extension
Adding extensions to your VoIP account will help you stay connected when you’re out of the office and working from home. Read the step-by-step guide below.
Creating & configuring a VoIP extension
How to setup Zoiper
All our hosted VoIP services require is an internet connection, so they can be used on any compatible device, including desktops, tablets and smartphone applications. You can make and manage calls through your Gradwell account, using our recommended softphone: Zoiper.
How to set up Zoiper for desktop
How to set up Zoiper for Android
We have also published a variety of helpful articles, including ‘how to’s’ and troubleshooting guides, which you can access below.
For more helpful articles please visit our main support website: https://support.gradwell.com
Openreach plans for home visits
As a supplier of Openreach broadband, we are complying with their rules regarding home and business visits. Openreach are introducing steps for their engineering teams should they need to visit customer premises.
If Openreach engineers need to make a visit, they will ask if anyone on the premises has been asked to self-isolate, how long they’ve been self-isolating for and if they’ve recently travelled to a high-risk area. If the answer is yes, the engineer will contact a hotline for advice on how to proceed and to ensure the job is scheduled for reappointment, when appropriate.
Additionally, they will ask if anyone on the premises has been experiencing any flu-like symptoms. If the answer is yes, the engineer will proceed with the job but will undertake additional hygiene precautions.
If the answer to both of these questions is no, the engineer will proceed as normal.
How to stay up to date with us
We constantly monitor our network for any unusual behaviour or outages and perform regular maintenance to provide the best possible level of resilience. To be prepared for any outage, however unlikely, subscribe to our status page alerts.
Our employees are already working remotely using our cloud telephony and data management systems. Our staff remain available to help. If you need to talk to us, our support team are doing their best to answer every query. Please note that this may take significantly longer than normal.
If your request is not urgent, please email us at support@gradwell.com and we’ll aim to get back to you as soon as we can.
