Abandoned Call / Abandon Rate — A caller who hangs up before reaching anyone, usually because they waited too long; the abandon rate is the share of calls that end this way. See Queue Position & Wait-Time Announcements.

ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) — The engine that automatically routes an incoming call to the next available or most appropriate person, instead of a human manually connecting it. See Automatic Call Distribution.

Active Directory (AD) / Azure AD (Entra ID) — Microsoft’s system for centrally managing employee accounts and logins — on your own servers (Active Directory) or in the cloud (Azure AD/Entra ID). See Directory Sync.

Agentless Dialer — An outbound dialing mode that plays a pre-recorded message to a list of contacts without needing a live agent connected to the call. See Agentless Dialer.

API (Application Programming Interface) — A defined way for other software to connect to and exchange data with your phone system programmatically. See Open API & Webhooks.

ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) — A small device that lets an older analog phone, fax machine, or alarm panel connect to a modern internet-based phone system. See Connecting Analog Devices.

Attended (Warm) Transfer — Transferring a call after first speaking privately with the person you’re transferring to, so they know who’s calling and why. See Attended Transfer.

Auto Attendant — An automated phone menu (“Press 1 for Sales…”) that lets callers route themselves to the right place without an operator. See Auto Attendant (IVR).

Bandwidth — How much data your internet connection can carry at once — the main factor in how many simultaneous calls and video meetings your connection can support cleanly. See Network Requirements & Readiness Check.

Barge-In — A supervisor tool that lets them join a live call directly, so the agent, the customer, and the supervisor can all speak. See Barge-In.

BI (Business Intelligence) — The dashboards and analytics tools businesses use to track performance across departments — sales, marketing, operations, and more — often by pulling in data from several systems at once. See Data Export & BI Integration.

Blind (Cold) Transfer — Transferring a call to someone else without speaking to them first to explain the situation. See Blind Transfer.

BLF (Busy Lamp Field) — A light or icon on a phone or app showing whether a colleague’s line is busy, ringing, or free.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) — Letting employees use their own phone, laptop, or tablet to place and receive business calls through a secure app. See BYOD Support.

Call Detail Record (CDR) — A log entry capturing the details of a call: who called, when, how long it lasted, and how it was routed. See Call Timeline & Detail Records.

Call Disposition — A short label and notes an agent applies to a call right after it ends (e.g., “Resolved,” “Follow-Up Required”) to categorize the outcome. See Call Disposition & Wrap-Up Notes.

Call Flip — Moving a live call seamlessly from one device to another (e.g., desk phone to mobile) without dropping it. See Call Flip.

Call Parking — Placing a call on hold in a shared “slot” so that anyone else in the office can pick it up from a different phone. See Call Parking & Retrieval.

Camp-On (Busy Camp-On) — A feature that lets a caller automatically connect to a busy extension the moment it becomes free, without redialing. See Busy Camp-On & Callback-on-Busy.

CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) — Cloud-delivered contact center software providing queuing, routing, and agent tools as a subscription rather than owned hardware.

Channel (Telephony) — One simultaneous call’s worth of capacity on a phone line or trunk — a connection with “10 channels” can handle 10 calls at once, no more, regardless of how many extensions or numbers you have.

Click-to-Call — Placing a call by clicking a phone number or button inside another application (like a CRM) instead of manually dialing. See Click-to-Answer/Transfer/Hold.

Codec — The algorithm used to compress and decompress voice audio so it can travel efficiently over the internet.

Co-location (Colo) — Housing your own server hardware in a professional third-party data center rather than in your office, for better power, cooling, and internet redundancy.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) — Software that tracks customer contacts, interactions, and sales history. See CRM Integrations.

CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) — Technology that lets a computer control phone functions — answer, transfer, hold, record — instead of relying on physical handset buttons. See Click-to-Answer/Transfer/Hold.

Cutover — The scheduled moment your service switches from an old phone system or carrier to the new one — ideally planned so there’s no gap in service. See Migrating From Your Current Phone System.

DID (Direct Inward Dialing) — A phone number that rings straight into your system and can route directly to a specific person, department, or menu, without going through a main line first. See Direct Inward Dialing Numbers.

Disaster Recovery (DR) — A backup system, often in a different physical location, that takes over automatically if your primary system goes down, so calls keep flowing. See Disaster Recovery.

DNC (Do Not Call) List — A list of phone numbers that outbound calling campaigns are legally blocked from dialing. See Do-Not-Call List Management.

DND (Do Not Disturb) — A status setting that silences incoming calls to a user’s phone.

DNI (Dynamic Number Insertion) — Technology that automatically swaps the phone number shown on your website or ad depending on where a visitor came from, so you can track exactly which marketing campaign generated each call. See Call Tracking Numbers for Marketing.

DOD (Direct Outward Dialing) — The specific outbound number your system displays on the recipient’s caller ID when you call out. See Outbound Caller ID.

E911 (Enhanced 911) — Emergency calling that automatically shares your exact location with dispatchers, even across multiple offices or remote workers. See Emergency Calling.

Extension — An internal short number assigned to a person, device, or department within your phone system. See Extension Management.

Failover — The automatic switch to a backup system the moment a primary system stops responding, so service continues without anyone manually intervening. See High Availability & Hot Standby.

Fail2ban-style protection (brute-force login protection) — Automatically blocking a source that repeatedly fails login attempts, to stop hacking attempts before they succeed. See Brute-Force Login Protection.

Firewall — A security barrier that filters incoming and outgoing network traffic based on rules you define. See Firewall & IP Allow/Block Lists.

First-Call Resolution (FCR) — Solving a customer’s issue completely during their first contact, with no follow-up call or transfer needed. See Skills-Based Queue Routing.

FXS / FXO Port — Physical ports on phone hardware: an FXS port connects to and powers an old-style analog phone or fax machine, while an FXO port connects to an incoming analog phone line from a carrier. See Connecting Analog Devices.

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) — The EU’s data privacy law governing how personal data, including call recordings, must be handled. See GDPR.

High Availability (HA) — System design that keeps your phone service running with minimal interruption even if a component fails. See High Availability / Hot Standby.

Hot Desking — Letting any employee log their personal extension into whichever shared desk phone is free that day. See Hot Desking & Shared Phones.

Hot Standby — A fully-ready backup server, kept in sync in real time, that can take over instantly if the primary system fails.

ISO 27001 — An international certification standard for how an organization manages information security. See ISO 27001.

ITSP (Internet Telephony Service Provider) — A company that provides phone lines/calling service delivered over the internet (a “SIP trunk” provider).

IVR (Interactive Voice Response) — The formal name for an automated phone menu system. See Auto Attendant (IVR).

Jitter, Latency & Packet Loss — The three network problems that cause choppy, delayed, or robotic-sounding calls. Latency is delay, jitter is inconsistent delay, and packet loss is data that never arrives — a stable, well-configured network keeps all three low. See Network Requirements & Readiness Check.

KPI (Key Performance Indicator) — A measurable metric — like answer rate or average wait time — used to track how well your team is performing.

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) — A standard method for looking up contact information from a centralized company directory. See Directory Sync.

MSP (Managed Service Provider) — A company (like ours) that handles the setup, monitoring, and ongoing management of a business’s phone, network, or IT systems, rather than leaving it to in-house staff.

Multicast Paging — Sending one audio announcement simultaneously to many phones and speakers at once, instead of paging each one individually. See Multicast & Zone Paging.

Multi-tenant — A single software platform that securely serves many separate customers from shared infrastructure, each with their own isolated data.

NAT (Network Address Translation) — A common router function that lets multiple devices share one internet address, which can complicate direct connections like phone calls unless handled properly.

OAuth 2.0 — A widely used standard that lets one app securely verify who you are through another service (like Microsoft or Google) without ever handling or storing your password directly. See Single Sign-On.

Omnichannel — Handling voice, chat, SMS, and social media messages through one unified system and inbox rather than separate disconnected tools. See Omnichannel Messaging.

PBX (Private Branch Exchange) — The phone system that routes calls within your organization and connects it to the outside phone network.

PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) — A security standard for any system that might handle credit card information, relevant to call recording. See PCI DSS.

Port Forwarding — Manually configuring a router to expose a device directly to the internet — often needed for older remote-access setups, but a security risk we avoid using safer alternatives.

POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) / Analog Line — A traditional copper phone line, the kind that’s been used for over a century — still common for fax machines, alarm panels, and elevator phones. See Connecting Analog Devices.

Power Dialer — An outbound dialing mode that adjusts its pace to agent availability, minimizing dropped or abandoned calls. See Power Dialer.

Presence — A status indicator showing whether a person is available, busy, away, or offline right now.

PRI / BRI (Digital Trunk Lines) — Older business-grade digital phone lines from a carrier: a PRI (Primary Rate Interface) carries roughly 23 simultaneous calls on one line, a BRI (Basic Rate Interface) carries 2. Most new deployments use SIP trunks instead, but many existing systems still run on PRI/BRI. See Choosing How You Connect to the Network.

Priority Queue — A queue setting that lets one group of calls “jump the line” ahead of calls waiting in a lower-priority queue. See Priority Queues & Acceleration.

Progressive Dialer — An outbound dialing mode that calls one contact at a time and only connects an agent once a live person actually answers. See Progressive Dialer.

PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) — The traditional global telephone network of copper and fiber lines used for standard phone calls.

QA (Quality Assurance) — The practice of reviewing recorded calls against a consistent checklist to score and coach agent performance, rather than relying on impressions alone. See QA Scoring & Coaching Notes.

QoS (Quality of Service) — A network setting that gives voice and video traffic priority over other data (like a big file download), so calls stay clear even when the network is busy. See Network Requirements & Readiness Check.

Queue (Call Queue) — A holding line where incoming calls wait until the next available person can take them. See Queuing & Routing.

Queue Callback — Letting a waiting caller request a call back later instead of staying on hold, while keeping their place in line. See Queue Callback.

RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) — Assigning system permissions based on a person’s job role rather than configuring access for each individual one by one. See Role-Based Access Control.

Ring Group — A set of extensions that all ring together, or in sequence, when a call comes in, so any available person can answer. See Ring Groups.

Ring Strategy — The rule that decides which phone rings next when a call is ready to be delivered to a group — e.g., ring everyone at once, or ring whoever has answered the fewest calls today. See Ring Strategies.

SDK (Software Development Kit) — A packaged toolkit that lets developers embed calling or messaging features directly into their own custom application. See SDKs.

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) — The technical standard used to set up, manage, and end voice and video calls over the internet.

SIP Trunk — A virtual phone line delivered over the internet that connects your phone system to the public phone network, replacing physical copper lines.

SLA (Service Level Agreement) — A target performance threshold — like “answer 80% of calls within 20 seconds” — that the system tracks and can alert on if it’s not being met. See SLA Threshold Alerts.

Skills-Based Routing — Sending a call to the specific person with the right expertise, rather than just whoever is next available. See Skills-Based Routing.

SMS / MMS — SMS (Short Message Service) is a standard text message; MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) is a text message that includes a photo, video, or other attachment. See SMS & MMS Messaging.

Softphone — Phone software that runs on a computer, mobile phone, or web browser instead of a dedicated desk phone, giving someone a full business calling experience from any device. See Softphone Apps.

SRTP (Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol) — An encrypted version of the technology that carries the actual voice and video of a call, protecting it from eavesdropping. See Call Encryption (TLS/SRTP).

SSO (Single Sign-On) — Logging in once to securely access multiple connected systems, without re-entering your password each time. See Single Sign-On.

Structured Cabling — The organized network wiring (Ethernet cabling, patch panels, wall jacks) run through a building to connect phones, computers, and network gear — needs planning ahead of any install in a new or renovated space. See Structured Cabling & On-Site Network Installation.

STT (Speech-to-Text) — Technology that converts spoken audio into written text in real time, the underlying capability behind live call transcription and voicemail transcription. See Real-Time Call Transcription.

TLS (Transport Layer Security) — Encryption technology that protects call setup and management data as it travels over the network. See Call Encryption (TLS/SRTP).

Toll Fraud — Unauthorized use of your phone system (often by hackers) to place expensive international or premium-rate calls at your expense. See Toll Fraud Prevention.

Trunk (Telephone Line) — Any connection — physical or virtual, analog, digital, or SIP — between your phone system and the outside phone network, capable of carrying multiple calls at once. See Choosing How You Connect to the Network.

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) — Requiring a second proof of identity — like a code from an app — in addition to a password to log in. See Two-Factor Authentication.

UC / UC&C (Unified Communications & Collaboration) — Combining voice, video, chat, and other communication tools into one connected platform.

UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) — Unified communications delivered as a cloud-hosted subscription rather than owned on-site hardware.

VoIP (Voice over IP) — Making phone calls using the internet rather than traditional copper phone lines.

VPN (Virtual Private Network) — A private, encrypted connection into an office network from somewhere else, used as an older/alternative way to reach internal systems remotely. See Remote Access & Work-From-Anywhere.

Wallboard — A real-time visual dashboard showing live team performance — calls waiting, agents available, SLA performance — at a glance. See Real-Time Wallboards.

Warm Transfer — See Attended Transfer.

Webhook — An automatic notification your phone system sends to another application the moment something happens (like a call ending), so that application can react immediately. See Open API & Webhooks.

Whisper Coaching — A supervisor tool that lets them speak privately to an agent during a live call, coaching them without the customer hearing. See Whisper Coaching.

Wrap-Up Time — The time an agent spends after a call ends finishing notes and follow-up tasks before they’re ready for the next call. See AI Call Summaries & Auto-Generated To-Dos.