Archive for October, 2009

Phone System Reliability – PoE and UPS

Published October 29, 2009 3rd party products , Feature Highlights 2 Comments
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Hi,

There have been some stories recently about power outages and brownouts affecting local businesses, and I go to thinking about the importance of keeping communications up and available. Of course, we have a UPS on each of our servers and essential desktops, but we hadn’t protected our phone system. One brainstorming session later and we have the fix.

I went down to the local tech shop and bought another UPS. The higher the capacity of the UPS, the longer we can keep our communications up for. This is for the Business Central 200 and our internet gateway. I found out recently that most Polycom phones can be powered by the BC200 over their Ethernet cable. If I just don’t plug in the phone’s power adapter, it will automatically switch to receiving power over Ethernet (PoE). Now our UPS will keep our gateway, BC200, and phones up in an outage.

All Polycom phones made in the last two years are compatible with PoE. Some older models will be as well, but there’s no easy way to tell by looking at them. Just leave the phone connected to the BC200, disconnect the power adapter and see if it remains on. Most Polycom phones are cheaper to buy without the power adapter, too.

Using PoE while connecting your gateway and BC200 to a dedicated UPS will keep your communications up during a power outage. That’s it for this topic, so I’m going to go and take some unneeded wall power adapters to the recyclers.

-Dave.


Using the Reception Workspace

Published October 20, 2009 Feature Highlights Leave a Comment
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Hi everyone,

I was speaking with the Sutus support team, and they mentioned that there is sometimes confusion about what the default Reception workspace is for, why it is included, and how it can be used effectively.

The Reception workspace, for the most part, is like all other shared workspaces: it allows its members to share access to files, emails and phone calls. Also, all members of Reception can configure the behavior of that shared workspace; what happens when someone calls (the incoming call flow) or when someone emails reception (email forwards/alias). Reception has two other benefits that normal shared workspaces do not have:

  1. It is the default destination for all external incoming calls.
  2. Its members have the added ability to record the Auto-Attendant greeting.

Now that we have an idea of why and how the Reception shared workspace is used by the company, we should look at how shared workspaces help administrators manage their system. The first and foremost benefit is that it allows for role-based configuration. For most companies, it does not matter which employee is currently acting as the receptionist. Calls and emails will normally be handled in the same way by all receptionists.

Imagine, for example, that your receptionist, Bob, is leaving the company and will be replaced by a new employee, whom we will call Jill. By using the Reception shared workspace to handle the role of the receptionist, all you will need to do is:

  1. delete Bob’s workspace, because he has left the company,
  2. create a new personal workspace for Jill, and
  3. add Jill to the Reception shared workspace.

However, if the Reception shared workspace was not being used, the administrator would need to:

  1. create a new personal workspace for Jill,
  2. write down Bob’s configuration, including call flow, email settings, and the like,
  3. forward all of Bob’s non-personal email to Jill,
  4. copy all of Bob’s non-personal files to Jill,
  5. forward all of Bob’s non-personal voice mails to Jill,
  6. delete Bob’s workspace,
  7. edit Jill’s workspace configuration to be the same as Bob’s,
  8. edit the callflow of all GW310 line’s to use Jill’s callflow, and
  9. edit the callflow of your VoIP provider to use Jill’s callflow.

Ouch. That is a lot of work.

In the second example, the role of reception was attached to a personal workspace. Moving this role to a new personal workspace requires a lot of customized configuration. In the first example, the role of the reception is attached to a shared workspace. This means that just the members change, not the workspace configuration! Jill will automatically have access to all of the reception email, files and phone calls that Bob had received during his time as the receptionist.

Using a shared workspace to manage roles applies to other positions in your office such as support, sales or accounting. By creating shared workspaces to handle each role, employees (personal workspaces) can move between roles and even share multiple roles.

The other benefit for installers is that all incoming calls go to a known place by default. This means that there is no configuration required if a new GW310 PSTN gateway or VoIP provider is added to the system. This is because the default behavior is to direct all of the phone lines to Reception’s incoming call flow. This makes new equipment installation easier and faster by reducing the number of configuration steps required.

That’s pretty much it for this week. Shared workspaces, in particular the Reception shared workspace, are pretty powerful tools. They can simplify the administration and day to day usage of your Business Central.

-Dave.

Collaborative Email Tricks

Published October 6, 2009 Feature Highlights Leave a Comment
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Hiya,

I’ve been having some thoughts recently about email, company image, and shared workspaces. Have you ever been emailing a company about several unrelated topics, only to notice that your inquiries to sales@company.com, finance@company.com, and development@company.com are all replied to by fred@company.com? Fred sure does wear a lot of hats at this business! And how can we classify his responses at a glance in they all come from the same address? Worst of all, what happens when Fred goes on holiday?

When we call a support line for a new widget manufacturer, we don’t care who talks to us. Any support worker will be able to solve our problem. However, we could just as easily call a specific extension and talk to a specific person. We can do the same with email – to reach a general group, we have distribution lists, forwarding to groups, and the like, while personal email addresses are nothing new – but those are clumsy and inefficient. Wouldn’t it be ideal for replies to a group to come from a consistent email address, and wouldn’t it be even better for an inbox to be accessible by all the members of a team? This is a collaborative workspace, where the whole team can function as a well-oiled machine.

So here’s how to set up a Support group. Create a shared workspace on your BC200, enable email service, such as support@example.com, and add each member to it. Then go to each team member’s computer and configure their email client to subscribe to the Support shared inbox. Now, when a message is received, it is readable by all members of that shared workspace. This isn’t the same as sending a copy to each person, so if one person handles the message those changes are visible to ”’all”’ members of the workspace.

To make it appear as as if we are sending email as Support, we must create a “Support Identity” on our email client that sends messages as support@example.com. All major email clients (Outlook, Mail, Thunderbird) have this capability, but here’s how to set it up with Sutus Webmail. (If you don’t have it, go here to sign up. Sutus Webmail )

1. Log on to Webmail, and click on ‘Personal Settings.’

2. Click the’ Identities’ tab, and click the ‘New Identity’ button.

3. Enter your display name (Widget Co. Support for our example,) and the email address (support@example.com).

4. Now, when sending email, you have the choice to send as either yourself or your group.

This keeps privacy for the team members by not forcing them to use a personal address for all company business, allows for team members to go on holiday without letting the customers know, and allows for the team’s size to vary in response to workload all while keeping continuity for the customers.

As well as allowing for team members to work together more efficiently, this makes it really simple for us to control another part of our company image. Of course, our company wants to be seen as organized, well-run, and coordinated, and keeping areas of specialization clearly delineated provides our customers with clear evidence that we are.

-Dave.

Enabling Mobile Employees

Published October 2, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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Hi Sutus users,

I really enjoy working from home. It’s relaxing, comfortable, and I don’t have to commute! However, I always had to remember to bring home a laptop and any files I needed. What if I forget one of them? Worse still, what if the laptop is stolen and my data is lost or compromised? Your BC200 can help you out. It’s not a new feature, but it really is a useful one. I’m talking about a Virtual Private Network, which is a simple way to connect to the office network from anywhere with an Internet connection. It takes just a few steps to set up, too. Open Business Central Manager, and click on Remote Office Access. Follow the instructions to set up either a PPTP or IPsec VPN. I’m going to recommend the ‘Help’ files this time, rather than have you follow my instructions. Just click the ‘Learn More…’ BUTTONS if you’re not sure what is right.

Here are some creative uses for a VPN, some that you may not have heard of:

  • connecting to an office file server, so you can work from home.
  • sending documents to network printers at the office.
  • backing up data remotely, just in case something happens to your home machine or laptop.
  • using a work softphone at home – the callers will never know that you’re at home, instead of at your desk. You’re still reachable, but callers don’t ever need to know your home number.
  • accessing company web servers for editing web pages or using a business instant messaging application.
  • making a proxy connection for Internet traffic – one of our contractors used her BC200 to watch her favourite local TV via Slingshot while she worked overseas!
  • deterring traffic snoopers – it is safer to use a VPN when you’re using a hotspot, for example.

So there you have it. It’s not much work to set up, but it really does open up a lot of connectivity possibilities. I’m going to leave it there for this week.

-Dave.

(P.S. – I’m not in my office while I write this!)