Can't conference calls together

[jcatucci812]

Hi all - first time poster here! My manager wants to hand off some of his phone system responsibilities to me, so I'm probably going to make myself comfortable on these forums ha!

I was wondering if you guys could help me out with my first problem. I'm still learning about Mitel phone systems so forgive me if my verbiage seems amateurish...

The issue is we cannot conference two calls together. I have phone training scheduled next week to teach users how to use their phones so I created a PowerPoint which covers basic call functions. Yesterday, I figured I'd run through all the slides to make sure everything I was going to demonstrate works, and of course I come to find conferencing calls isn't working. I know I tested this out last week and it worked. I'm not sure what changed. When you go to conference the two calls together, it just drops the one call.

For example, I'm connected to my first caller. I press the transfer/conference button, and 'Transfer Call to Extension' appears on the phone screen. I dial the second party's number and they answer. If I hit the transfer/conference button again, it disconnects the second party's call. I've tested this with several different phones to rule out the possibility of it being an issue with my specific phone. My manager looked inside the DB Programming to see if there were any flags or something related to Conferencing that was disabled, but everything seemed OK.

Our phone system is a Mitel 5000 and a majority of our phone models are 5320/5330.

Has anyone ran into this before? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[acejavelin]

In the 5000, the Conference and Transfer functions are not the same combined feature, the key on your set is a Transfer to Ring key, not a Transfer/Conference key. To performance an ad hoc conference you need a Conference Key, or use FEATURE 5 (the default feature access code for conference is 5, but check your system's programming).

http://www.denwa.co.uk/blog/cloud-communications/mitel-5000-review-conference-calls/

[DND ON]

Trying to create conference calls using the feature code is cumbersome at best; most calls will fail. If you really want to use the feature, make sure there is a conference key on the phone.

Dial your first party, then press conference. Repeat as necessary, then press conference twice to join everyone together. Easy peasy.

If you’re serious about working on the phone system, your vendor can arrange for training.

[dwayneg]

When Acejavelin says use "feature" 5, he's referring to the SPECIAL (or feature) key, the one with the X in a circle.  So to build a conference you call first party, then X5, then second party, X5 again, until you've called everyone.  Then X5X5 to join everyone.

The system can also do "meet me" conferencing where everyone dials in and enters a conference code.  For that to work you must have the CONFIGURATION ASSISTANT programmed in SYSTEM/DEVICES AND FEATURE CODES/ASSISTANTS.  You create the conferences from one of the USER web accounts, plus each USER who has conference authorization automatically has a code that matches his extension created.  So, dial the conf assist, enter code and #

[jcatucci812]

I've figured it out now thanks to the three of you. Using the SPECIAL key + 5 to conference calls together worked.

The really strange thing is I had it working last week. I'm not crazy either! My boss says the same thing because he was involved in the conference call test. I could have sworn I used the transfer button to do it. It's all moot now since I know the proper way to do it, but is it possible something changed in the system to cause that? 

Thank you all for taking the time to reply!