New Year, New Delightful Features!

Welcome to 2018! I hope that you managed to grab a few moments to yourself over the summer break, and arrive at your desk refreshed and ready for an exciting year!

Our dedicated developers have been working hard over summer to bring even more great features your way, and I’d like to make sure you’re up to date with some ways that Cradle can help your business. Recently we have released two major new features, Presence and Offices.

Presence is to help your team know whether someone is available to call, and also helps us prioritise the order of people in a role when we’re doing a round robin call.

Offices gives you the ability to set up different numbers with different time zones, call rules (Auto-attendants, Direct calls) etc, meaning you can have numbers in different countries or locations dealt with differently. This is very useful to our customers who sell internationally or those that have offices in more than one place. You can also use it to set up DDIs.

We’re also adding to these two features this week, with some of our work over the summer!

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‍Select your presence manually or let Cradle work its magic

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Blind Transfer

The first new thing that should make the receptionists life easier is the addition of Blind Transfer. Up until now we have only had a warm call transfer, but from this week you will be able to update your apps (versions 1.4 and later include Blind Transfer) and select to either introduce the caller or just transfer immediately.

When you do a Blind Transfer, the person you transfer to has 10 rings to pick up the call before the call goes to voicemail (which is then emailed to the person the call was intended for). The person receiving the call can also see the number of the person calling.

Choose to transfer right away or make a warm introduction

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Ringtones

Our iOS and Android apps now include some choice of ringtone! We have nearly gone crazy in our office with only one ringtone; I’m sure you’re feeling the same! Hit the settings tab on iOS or Android and choose something that’s more you. We’ll expand the range of ringtones in time.

iPhone X

From iOS version 1.4 onward, you will be able to use the full 5.8 inches when you’re in Cradle.‍

Desktop App

We haven’t left our desktop users behind! We are releasing Blind Transfer in version 1.4, but there are also some huge usability improvements:

1. Call from the recents screen by hitting enter once you have typed a number into the search bay
2. Use Cradle with call to: links. This enables direct calling from BaseCRM using the Call using Skype link (and any other Skype Phone number link)
3. Adjust audio settings in a call
4. See call quality when you’re on the phone, and report any issues back to us using the smily face
5. On screen notifications! When you receive a call you will see a notification on your screen. Great for quieter offices.

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“Can you hear me?”

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What are we working on?

We’re always working to make Cradle a better tool for your business. We’re currently looking into the following:

1. Headsets: Soon you’ll be able to answer and end calls from the buttons on your Jabra headset
2. Call Hold: Soon you’ll be able to put callers on hold
3. Call Queues: If you sometimes receive lots of calls, we will be able to keep these people in a queue for you until your team are ready to answer them

There are of course heaps of other things we are working on, with a view to making your lives and those of your customers better. Our goal is to make sure that the right person in your team answers the calls, as soon as they can.

If you have any feedback for us, good or bad, just hit reply to this email. If your mates could use a much better phone experience, why not introduce them to us!

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All the best for a great 2018 for your business — we’re looking forward to being a part of it!

Gary, Max, James and the Cradle team.