How to Park Calls?

Description: The purpose of this article is to guide you through the process of enabling the Park Hold feature for your MS Teams account and using it in the desktop app.

The Call Park feature enables a user to temporarily hold a call. When a call is parked, the system generates a unique code for call retrieval. This code can be used by either the user who placed the call on hold or by another person with a compatible application or device to retrieve the call.

How to Enable the Park Hold Feature

To enable the Park Hold feature, go to Microsoft Teams admin center.

Locate and select the "Voice" option in the left-hand menu of the page to expand it.

Once the content is displayed, choose the "Call Park Policies" option.

Once you have selected this option from the menu, it will open the "Call Park Policies" page. On this page, you will see the table of existing call park policies. 

To create a new call park policy, simply press the "Add" button.

Upon clicking this button, you will be redirected to a new page where you configure the call park policy you are creating.

There are five parameters on this form that need to be configured:

• Name: here, you can set a name for the newly created call park policy.
• Description: withing this optional field, you are able to add some description of the newly created call park policy.
• Call Park: by enabling this toggle switch, you will activate the call park feature to any user assigned to this configured policy.
• Call pickup start of range: this parameter indicates that the minimum retrieval code value that will be assigned to the parked calls. All the subsequent parked calls will receive retrieval codes incremented by 1, starting from the last used code.
• Call pickup end of range: this parameter indicates the maximum retrieval code value assigned to parked calls. Once this limit is reached, incoming calls will not be parked.
• Park timeout: here, you can configure the call park timeout parameter, which is measured in seconds.

After pressing the "Save" button, the newly created call park policy will appear in the table of existing call park policies.

Then, you will need to assign the users you wish to grant access to the call park feature to the recently created policy. To do so, simply select the newly created call park policy and press the "Assign users" button.

Once you pressed this button, a new pop-up form will appear on the right side of the window, allowing you to use the search bar for locating and selecting particular users to whom you would like to apply this custom call park policy.

After inputting a few characters into the search bar, if the entered text is sufficient to identify a user with that combination of letters, they will be presented in the dropdown list below the search bar.

When you hover your mouse cursor over the displayed user, the "Add" button becomes visible.

After clicking this button, the selected user will be added to the list of assigned users, which will be displayed on this form. 

If you accidentally added the wrong user, you can remove them from this list by clicking the "X" badge next to the user's name that you want to exclude. To complete the assignment, click the "Apply" button. Once you click the button, a pop-up message will appear indicating that the assignment will require some time to take effect.

The assigned users will not be immediately visible in the table of existing call park policies. To locate them, you should select the policy you configured and choose the "View Users" option for that specific line in the "Assigned to users" column.

Upon clicking this button, the "Manage users" page for the selected policy will open, allowing you to view all the users you have previously assigned to it.

How to Park Calls in MS Teams

When using the MS Teams app and you receive a call that you wish to park, your first step is to find the "More" button located on the top panel of the app.

If your user account is already assigned to a call park policy that has the call park feature enabled, you can access the "Park Call" option within the drop-down menu that appears when you click this button.

Following a brief loading process, a message will appear confirming that the call has been parked. This message will also provide you a retrieval code, which is necessary for accessing the parked call.

You have the option to either memorize this retrieval code or copy it to your clipboard by clicking the "Copy code" button.

Do not forget that the call will remain parked for the duration you have set in the "park timeout" parameter of the call park policy that you have created for your user account.

To access parked calls, go to the "calls" tab within the MS Teams app and click the "Parked Calls" button located under the Ooma Dial Pad. 

Once you press this button, a small pop-up window will appear, requesting you to input the retrieval code for the call you wish to un-park.

Once you input the retrieval code for a currently parked call and click the "Pick Up" button, the call will be resumed.

If you happen to forget the retrieval code for one of the parked calls, you can access the list of all your currently parked calls in the "Ongoing" section of the "Calls" tab. 

Within this section, you will not only find a list of calls but also their associated retrieval codes. Additionally, there is a "Dismiss" button for each call, which, when clicked, allows you to disconnect the selected parked call.