Place and receive calls

8x8 Work for Desktop enables you to quickly and flexibly place and receive calls, ensuring that your calling experience seamlessly adapts to your situation. Your call will be intuitive and easy to handle regardless of whether you are making or receiving a call, speaking with a company or external contact, or handling your call from one of several devices.

Place calls

There are several ways to place calls from 8x8 Work for Desktop, to suit where you are in the app at the time. Most of the time, you might place calls from your list of contacts or from the dial pad. By default, you make calls in 8x8 Work for Desktop using your computer microphone and speakers. However, you can dial from 8x8 Work but send the call through your desk phone, your headset, or another available device.

Note: While on a call, you can quickly switch between the audio devices available on your computer (such as an integrated speaker or paired Bluetooth headset) without the option to switch to your desk phone or an external device, as this would disrupt an active call.

To place a call from the contact directory:

  1. Open your list of Contacts .
  2. Go to Favorite, Company, or My Contacts.
  3. Hover over the desired contact, and click the Phone option that appears to place a call.

To place a call from the dial pad:

  1. Open your list of Calls .
  2. Click Dial pad to bring up the dial pad.
  3. Dial the desired number, or paste a copied number, to place a call. 8x8 Work for Desktop ignores leading zeroes, spaces, and non-numeric characters (such as the parentheses in a US area code), allowing you to paste and dial E.164-formatted phone numbers.
    Once you place the call, you hear a ringback tone specific to each country while waiting for the call to be answered.

Note: If your 8x8 Work for Desktop application window is large enough to support two panes of information side-by-side (also known as Expanded Mode), you can also see which country you are about to call.

If a country has only one time zone, the local time of the country appears as well.

Receive calls

Note: If you are in an 8x8 meeting when you receive a call, the incoming call notification shows up without ringing audibly to avoid interrupting your meeting.

When you receive a call in 8x8 Work, a notification appears as a banner in the application (or pops up on-screen if enabled while the app is minimized) which displays the Caller ID and number, which number or queue you are being called on, and prompts you to accept or decline the call. You can:

  • Accept the call to begin speaking.
  • Decline the call to send it to voicemail.
  • Note: When receiving a call through 8x8 Contact Center, the incoming call notification is displayed. The agent now only sees the Answer . The expert connect/transfer calls controls are no longer displayed.

If you are part of a ring group, auto attendant, or call queue, you also see whether you are receiving a call on behalf of yourself or your work group.

Note: Ring Groups displays information according to the settings made by the admin in the Ring Group Caller ID section in 8x8 Admin Console. If you want to see your personal or company contacts when you receive a call you must toggle on the Resolve Ring Group calls against available Contacts.

To enable the toggle to synchronize Ring Group calls with your available Contacts:

  1. On the navigation menu, click Settings > Contacts.
  2. Toggle on the Resolve Ring Group calls against available Contacts.

You can enable or disable your incoming call pop-up notification in your notification settings.

In addition, when a call is accepted, and the Calls tab in the app is not in focus, you now can drag and drop the active call card over the app screen, and move it in a different position.

On the desktop application, you can:

  • Drag and drop the call card anywhere on the screen, within the app screen or over other apps.
  • Pin/unpin the call card. Click from the upper left-hand side of the call card to ensure the call card always displays on top of your active applications on the screen. Click again to unpin it.

On the web application, you can drag and drop the call card anywhere within the browser window.

Note: You can move the call card to a different position even when pinned. The call card continues to display where pinned until you unpin it.

Note: While in an internal call, you can initiate a chat with the person on the call directly from the call card by clicking the Chat icon. This option allows you to quickly chat with a caller/callee without having to navigate to the Messages tab. The chat icon displays on the call card for internal contact calls only after the call is accepted.