JordanJ,

I'm not really sure what we could do to make this easier.

The reason that you need to dial "*6" before the orbit number (0-9) is that the system needs to know that you want to pick up a call from a system orbit. When you are using the softkeys, you press a softkey "system" to indicate this.

One of the advantages of using orbit keys, is that their lamp status is used to show that a call is waiting in orbit etc.

If this system is big and busy enough that they are using more than a couple of park orbits, then perhaps 34-button phones would have been a more appropriate choice?