How to determine the Employee code and or pin number for each user

The Employee code is more critical for the internal workings of MonTel than might first be expected. Basically the employee code is used as a unique and immutable identifier for a single person, as distinct from an extension or login name.

MonTel uses the Employee code to uniquely identify a user.

MonTel needs this unique Employee identifier to be able to link (or import and export) to Practise management and other systems who will not necessarily have any record of the Login name or the extension. There are also cases where users have the same name, or have changed their name during their employment period.

Generally, these systems have unique codes, and should be used directly for MonTel. Often this unique employee code is the payroll number.

In some installation an employee, staff or payroll code information is not used, but MonTel is still linked to a system that needs user identification information, such as Monitor Business systems. In this scenario Monitor picks up and uses the Login name, Employee code or the user extension (this is configurable - see: How to use the MONITOR Business Machines Export Filters and How to use the Monitor Business Machines MonTel import filter), however, MonTel still needs to have a unique employee code to be able keep database integrity since the same basic database design is used in all scenarios.

Why is it NOT a good idea to use the extension number as the employee code?

The extension number for an employee may change in the future as they move office or station. In this case their employee code will then match the extension number of the replacement employee, and adding a new employee to the database will be problematic in the extreme (database referential integrity violation errors). To avoid confusion do not use the extension number as the employee code.

MonTel uses the employee code extensively so it is able to link call records to a person, rather than just an extension or a login name. This allows MonTel to support some installations or sites where the login name is shared among multiple staff, or where a person has multiple extensions, or where an extension is shared among a group of staff.

For clarity the employee code should also be different from the login name. Though, in many of the scenarios above using the login name as the employee code might work if it is unique, since it is unlikely to change. However, for example, what might happen when the login name is say the first name of a user, and Peter X leaves, his login is deleted, and some time later a Peter Y joins the firm. We then have MonTel keeping old records for one person, linking them to another person entirely - which may cause problems for someone doing a search by employee code for call records.

What is the pin number?

This pin number field was introduced to support Monitor Business systems installation where the user was linked by a pin number that was used by the employee to access photo copy machines and other devices. And, also situations where employees entered a pin number on the telephone handset to be able to access an outside line. Generally this pin number was a decimal number consisting on of digits. This is provided as a separate field, so that the employee code can still refer to employee, staff or payroll code.

Since, this code should be kept secret, it is bad practise to keep it in the publicly available PABX.INI file, and so the use of the Pin number feature is generally discouraged.

For ease of installation, and in situations where the pin number can be the same as the employee code, then an option is provided in the PABX.INI [Program] section to allow this to be automatically copied, see: PinNumberSameAsEmployeeCode.