Invite Users to a Conference Call

Out of the box, only conference moderators can pull additional people into a running conference. If you want ordinary participants to be able to invite others as well, you enable that permission on the conference itself. This page covers both the setting change and the in-call steps for dialing someone into the conference.

Let participants invite others

By default the invite privilege is reserved for moderators. To extend it to extension participants:

1. Sign in to the Cloud Voice management portal and open Call Features > Conference.
2. Open the conference you want to change for editing.
3. Turn on Allow Extension Participants to Invite.
4. Click Save, then Apply to commit the change.

Note

A moderator is the conference host who has control over the meeting. A participant is any other extension (an internal phone line on your system) that has joined the call. This permission is set on each conference individually, so turning it on for one conference does not change any of the others.

Caution

Once participants can invite, any of them can dial out from the conference, including to external, long-distance, or international numbers that may incur charges. Only enable this for conferences where you trust participants to place outbound calls.

Caution

Save stores your change, but it does not take effect until you also click Apply. If the new invite permission does not seem to work, confirm that you clicked Apply after saving.

Bring someone into an active conference

Once you are on a conference call, you can dial out to add a new attendee:

1. Press the # key. This temporarily pulls you out of the conference so you can place the outbound call.
2. Dial the number of the person you want to add.

Once the person you dialed either accepts or declines the invitation, you are automatically returned to the conference call.

Note

Pressing # during the call sends a DTMF command. DTMF (Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency) is the set of tones your phone generates when you press a key mid-call, and the conference bridge listens for these tones to trigger the invite action.

Tip

Stay on the line while the call rings. Hanging up cancels the invite, and you rejoin the conference on your own only after the invitee answers or rejects. If you need to add several people, repeat the two steps once for each person.