PBX operations taxonomy
An SMB phone system has five group-distribution primitives, and Orbit ships a page for each under Voice. The confusion between operators is mostly vocabulary — “hunt group”, “ring group”, “paging”, and “park orbit” mean different things on different PBXs. This page fixes one definition per primitive and sends you to the operator guide for the one you picked.1. The five primitives
The older term for “ring group” is hunt group — on legacy PBXs the hunt strategy (circular, longest-idle, sequential) is the ring-group strategy selector on Orbit. When a vendor asks for a hunt group, the answer is the ring group page.
2. Pick the right one per call shape
- Receptionist / front desk / exec-assistant — SLA. The line rings every member, anyone answers, and the answered call can be Grab’d onto another member’s phone.
- “Move this live call to a colleague somewhere else in the building” — Call park. The lobby page reads held calls by slot so the recipient can retrieve from any phone.
- ” distribute inbound calls across the team fairly” — Ring group. First available answers; a queue is only needed when calls must FIFO-hold.
- “Announce to a room or broadcast a page” — Paging group. One-way; no return channel, no ringing.
- “More agents than desks, agents rotate” — Hot-desking. The phone follows the signed-in agent, not the furniture.
3. When none of the five fit — graduate to a queue
A queue is the CCaaS routing layer with FIFO holding, skills-based assignment, SLA timers, and overflow policies. The five primitives above are live-call distribution; they do not hold callers in order. If your call center needs callers held in line, agents ranked by skill, or wrap-up time between calls, build the queue, not a bigger ring group — see the ACD queue model and the queues guide.4. A 10-seat SMB without desks — worked pattern
A ten-person team where everyone floats:- Hot-desking the phones. Provision one shared SIP credential per physical phone; every agent signs in at the start of a shift and the phone routes as them. Walk-up sign-in covers most shifts; the reservation calendar covers booked seats.
- SLA the main number. Point the main DID at a shared line so anybody with an open desk rings — no dedicated receptionist.
- Park overflow. Calls that need a colleague outside the conversation move via park, retrieved from whichever desk the colleague signed in at.
- Page the floor. A page group reaches all desk-speakers for “call parked on 1” without ringing.
- Ring group for a team. The sales DID uses a ring-all strategy so the entire team’s signed-in devices ring; hot-desking guarantees the right devices are live.
- Fallback to voicemail. Every DID route carries a voicemail fallback so an empty roster never drops the call — the DID routing guide covers fallback wiring: Pick the right inbound routing for a DID.