What is a softphone?

The app registers with your phone system exactly as a desk phone would. From the network's point of view there is no difference, which is why extensions, transfers and hold all still work.

What changes is the hardware underneath. Your call now depends on a laptop's wifi, a headset's Bluetooth, and whatever else is competing for the connection.

That trade is usually worth it. Staff take their extension home, a new starter is set up in minutes, and there is no handset to buy.

Audio quality is where people get bitten. A cheap headset on a congested wireless network sounds worse than a twenty-year-old desk phone, and the caller hears all of it.

Imagine you run a four-person insurance agency and you're adding a fifth person who works from home two days a week. You create extension 105 in the phone portal, and the system emails her a QR code. She installs the app on her laptop and her cell, scans the code, and both devices ring within about ten minutes.

On day three she misses four calls in a row and nobody knows why. It turns out her laptop lid was closed over lunch, which put the app to sleep. The cell had quietly restricted the app's background activity to save battery, so it never rang either.

Neither failure showed up as an error anywhere. From the caller's side the extension rang until it gave up, and from her side it was a quiet lunch. The fix took two settings: exempt the app from battery optimization on the phone, and allow notifications to wake the screen.

Start with emergency calls. A 911 call placed from a softphone goes out with the address registered on the account, which is usually the office. Somebody working from home needs their own address on file in the phone portal. Update it the same day the app gets installed.

Next, look at which microphone the app picked. Laptops often default to the built-in mic even with a headset plugged in, so the caller hears the room and your keyboard. Make a test call to your own cell and listen to yourself.

The last one is what happens when the app isn't running. Every extension should have a no-answer rule that sends the call somewhere after 15 or 20 seconds. A colleague or an answering service will do. Desk phones are always on. An app is only on when its device is awake, charged and connected, and your fallback rule covers the gap.

GreetKeeper does not need one. Calls reach the assistant by forwarding at your carrier, so there is nothing to install on any device.

Transfers work in the other direction. A call handed to your team rings whatever that team already uses, softphone or handset or mobile.

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