Ever notice how distracting background noises can be on a conference call? Fire sirens, dogs barking, jack hammers -- everything including flushing toilets -- can infiltrate and ruin a conference call. That's why the the "muting" feature is so important. It's a feature that is included as part of your service and can be used with a touch of a button. If you are hosting the conference call as a moderator, just press *5 (star+5) on your touchtone phone and you will automatically put the conference in "lecture mode", which means that everyone on the call will be muted, except for those folks who called in using the moderator PIN code. Another way to mitigate background noise is to have each participant press *6 (star+6). That will mute that particular individuals line. The way to reverse those commands is just repeat them. In other words, a host can reopen and "unmute" the conference call by pressing *5.
But be careful. Make sure that no one on your conference call has built in background music or announcements when they put their phone on hold. (Remember, it's "mute" you want, NOT "hold.") So you want to avoid the situation of someone walking away during the call, putting their phone on hold, forcing everyone else in the conference to listen to their music.
