Participants Dial in to a Conferencing Station
In on-demand conference calling, the "leader" of the conference call usually has a pre-assigned conference number or access code which can be distributed to the conference participants. The callers dial in to the conference from any type of telephone, including land line, mobile or VOIP phones. When the callers dial in, the number they dial may go directly in to the conferencing station, or it may terminate to a top-level interactive response unit that requires a conferencing code to proceed.
The Conference Call is Software Controlled
When the participants dial in to the conferencing station, they are actually reaching a computer with multiple telephone interfaces (while many older conferencing stations actually used physical telephone lines, more modern equipment uses voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) and an Internet connection to facilitate conferences). The computer converts incoming voice connections into data packets, then uses specialized software to combine the many separate calls into a single conversation. As callers dial in or hang up, the computer registers the call and uses the called number or access code to match the caller with the appropriate conversation.
Leaders Control the Call
Like participants, conference call leaders must dial in to the conferencing station via telephone. The leader identifies himself as a leader, though, by either dialing a separate number or entering a special code when first connected to the conferencing station (depending on the software configuration, all callers may hear a prompt to enter a leader "PIN" to assume leader responsibilities). Once the leader has identified himself, he may start the conference, put the conference on hold, end the conference, or activate various other conference call features.
Depending on the software configuration and capabilities, leaders may also have the option to enable call recording, identify individual callers, manually add or disconnect participants, adjust the language of the greeting heard by callers, or even break participants out into separate conferences. Since the leader dials in via telephone, all of these features are activated by entering specific codes using the telephone keypad, though some conference stations allow leaders to activate and control the call on the World Wide Web.
Tags: callers dial, conferencing station, access code, conference call, dial conferencing station, number access
