Pagers and Subscriber IDs

Some paging services provide subscriber IDs to distinguish among different individuals. In this situation, subscribers typically share a single phone number issued by the paging service, and individual users are identified by their unique subscriber IDs.

For example, to send a numeric page to a person who uses this system you could call a phone number such as 1-800-555-1111, listen to a message prompting you to provide a subscriber ID, and then enter an ID such as 4545. Some services also require you to enter a special character such as the pound symbol (#, also called a hash symbol) to indicate the end of the ID.

When you specify the pager phone number for users or address book entries that have such a paging service, you must enter both the phone number of the paging service and the subscriber ID in the Pager field of the Administration Console. Use a semicolon to separate the toll-free number from the subscriber ID, and provide a special character to terminate the subscriber ID, if required. (The semicolon causes Vocera to pause until the pager is ready to receive the numbers to display.)

For example, if the number of the paging service is (800) 555-1111, the subscriber ID of the recipient is 4545, and the paging service requires a pound (hash) symbol to terminate the subscriber ID, enter the following value in the Pager field:

(800) 555-1111 ; 4545 #

When a Vocera user issues the Page command, Vocera dials the pager number, waits until the connection is established, and then passes the service the subscriber ID of the person being paged followed by the pound (hash) symbol to indicate the end of the PIN. At the end of this sequence, Vocera automatically passes the pager the hunt group/DID number of the Vocera system followed by the desk extension of the user who called, or simply the user's DID number, if he or she has one. The pager displays everything following the pound symbol.

The pager’s owner returns the call by doing any of the following:

In all cases, Vocera then connects the return call to the user’s Vocera device—not to the desk phone.