The NCS internal phone system. Around twenty-five extensions across four locations.
Everyone’s numbers were ported in, so this isn’t a second line or a novelty. When somebody dials your number, this is what rings.
Calling each other
Extension to extension, dial the four-digit extension. No area code, no long distance, no difference between calling the next room and calling the other side of the country. Everyone on the system is four digits away.
Your desk phone has a directory built into it — that’s the quickest way to find someone without memorising anything. A full extension list is also kept on NCSCSP; ask if you need the link.
Dialling outside the system: dial 1 plus the number for anything out of area, the way you always have.
Emergencies
911 works from your desk phone. It’s properly registered, which is the part that matters — the dispatch centre that answers is the one covering the address where that phone actually sits, not one on the other side of the country where the system happens to live. It’s been tested.
That registration is tied to the phone being where we said it is, which leads to something worth knowing in advance:
When the app arrives, don’t treat it as an emergency phone. A desk phone has an address. An app on a laptop or a phone in your pocket does not — it’s wherever you carried it, and the system has no way to know. If you need emergency services and you’re not at your desk phone, use your cell. That isn’t a limitation we plan to engineer away; it’s the nature of the thing.
Voicemail
Voicemail lives on your phone and is protected by the PIN you asked for when your extension was set up. Check it from the handset.
Voicemail to email is coming once the email migration is finished — messages will land in your inbox as an audio file, so you can hear them without being in front of the phone. It’s waiting on NCSMEP rather than on the phone system.
Intercom and paging
This part already works, and it’s more useful than it sounds.
The phones can page — announce to a handset or a group of them, like an intercom. It’s currently used to page the house rather than shouting up a staircase, and as a baby monitor, which is exactly the sort of thing a phone system turns out to be good at once it exists.
The same thing can be set up at any of the other locations. If you’d find it useful where you are, ask.
Gates, doors and cameras
The system integrates with door stations and gate call boxes, so somebody at the entrance can ring the house directly and be let in without anyone walking down there. It ties into the camera systems where that makes sense, so you can see who you’re talking to.
This is working with CyberData SIP endpoints and Hanwha call boxes — both confirmed, not theoretical.
Currently live at Site A. The other locations can have it; it just isn’t installed yet. If you’d find a gate station useful where you are, ask.
Menus
The system has automated menus for routing incoming calls. They’re set up and working, and they aren’t fixed — if the way calls get routed doesn’t match how things actually work, that can be changed. Ask rather than working around it.
Call recording
Recording is available, and it is off unless you switch it on. Nothing is recorded by default — not your calls to each other, not your calls out. It’s a thing you do deliberately, per call.
To start recording, press *1 during the call. That’s it — no setup, nothing to configure in advance.
If you do use it, one thing is worth knowing, and it applies directly to people on this system.
Some states require everyone on the call to agree to being recorded, not just you. California is one of them, and its rule holds even when you’re the one recording from somewhere else. We have extensions there. So “I’ll record this” and “I’m calling my cousin” is a combination worth a second’s thought.
The simple version: tell them you’re recording. One sentence, it settles the question completely, and it’s what you’d want if it were the other way round.
Where it goes: the recording is saved on the phone server and then emailed to the address on file for your extension. You don’t have to go and fetch it — it turns up in your inbox.
Worth remembering that this means a copy of the call is sitting in your mailbox afterwards. That’s usually the point, but it’s worth knowing before you record something you’d rather not have lying around.
What’s coming
A softphone, so your extension travels rather than living on a desk. Still being chosen.
Text messaging on your NCSVDS number. In progress. Doing this well on a self-hosted system is genuinely awkward, which is why it isn’t finished rather than why it isn’t coming.
No dates. Same rule as everything else: announced when it works, not when it’s planned.
Problems
Open a ticket at ncshds.northlandcentral.org, email support@ncsmx.org, or call (210) 904-8005.
If your desk phone is completely dead — no dial tone, no display — check the network cable before reporting it. These phones take power over that same cable, so one knocked loose kills both at once and looks far more dramatic than it is.
