Enable Hot Desking for an Extension User

Hot desking lets a user claim any shared phone as their own by signing in with their extension number, so their identity, calls, and personal settings follow them to whatever seat they use. It is common in offices where staff rotate desks, work in shifts, or share a pool of phones. Before a user can do this, you enable the feature on their extension in the PBX (Private Branch Exchange, the phone system) web portal.

Turn on hot desking for the extension

1. Sign in to the PBX web portal and go to Extension and Trunk > Extension.

2. Find the extension you want, click the edit icon next to it, and open the Features tab.

3. Scroll to the Hot Desking section and switch it on.

   

4. Adjust the options below to match how you want the user to be signed out.

   Setting	What it controls
   Log Out of Queue	Whether the user is dropped from their call queues when they sign off. Turn this on to have the system remove the extension as a dynamic agent from any queue as soon as the user logs out of the hot desking phone.
   Automatic Guest Out	Whether and when the user is signed out of a hot desking phone automatically. Choose one of the following: Never - The user stays logged in until they sign out manually. After - Sign the user out once a set amount of time has passed since they logged in. At Daily - Sign the user out at the same fixed time every day.

   Note

   A dynamic agent is an extension that joins or leaves a call queue on demand rather than being permanently assigned to it. With Log Out of Queue on, the user stops receiving queue calls the moment they log out of the shared phone, so calls are not sent to an empty seat.

   Tip

   For phones shared by rotating or shift-based staff, set Automatic Guest Out to After or At Daily. This frees the seat for the next person and prevents a phone from being left signed in overnight.

   Caution

   Leaving Automatic Guest Out on Never means the extension stays active on that phone until the user signs out by hand. Until then, anyone sitting at that desk can place and receive calls as that user. Prefer an automatic logout on any phone in a shared or public area.

5. Click Save, then Apply.

   Caution

   Your changes are not live until you click Apply. Clicking Save alone stores the settings but does not push them to the phone system.

Danger

Hot desking lets a user sign in to a phone that may sit at a different physical location than their usual desk. Emergency (E911, Enhanced 911) calls are dispatched to the address on record for the phone or extension, so responders could be sent to the wrong place. Before rolling out hot desking across more than one site, confirm your emergency address setup so an emergency call is always tied to the caller’s real location.