Archive for the 'Feature Highlights' Category

Can you control your phone from your computer?

Published April 22, 2010 Feature Highlights , New Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , ,

Hi everyone,

I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with beta testing recently, and I’m pretty excited about some new product that will really make customer management easier. Interested? Read on…

First things first. This application lives in your Windows toolbar and works with both your Outlook and your Polycom phone. There are also plans to have it integrate with some common database systems (CRMs), so you can log call numbers and times, customer support information, and case notes from your workers.

It makes all your dialing as simple as typing part of a person’s name. It’s actually just like having all of your contacts on speed dial! When you receive a call, your computer uses the CallerID number to find and display the Outlook contact information, so you will know exactly who it is. It can also flash up a window with the contact’s details when you receive a call, which will let your customer support workers greet each caller in a well-prepared fashion. It’s also only one click to call people back!

Also, it can interact, work, and integrate with Google Maps. If you enter contact info that is not in Outlook, you can perform a search without opening your browser. Once you choose the correct hit, you can call them with only one click. When you’re done, you can create a new Outlook contact, including a clickable link to Google Maps, which will autofill to save time and effort.

The plan is to make this available upon request within the next month. Just email the Sutus sales team and they’ll contact you when it goes live!

-Dave.

Help that helps

Published April 15, 2010 Feature Highlights Leave a Comment
Tags: , , ,

Hi everyone,

I thought I’d save some trouble for you out there in blog-land, and tell you about an easy fix we came across this weekend. I was out of the office, and our new IT guy wanted to set up a spare phone in the lunchroom. However, he wasn’t totally sure about how to do it, and didn’t want to do it wrong. So, he called me and woke me up.

I wasn’t totally sure about the process either, and he didn’t really think it was important enough to call Sutus Support about. After some deliberation, he decided to check out the help files. I know it sounds surprising, especially for a technology company, but the help files actually helped him figure out what to do!

If that wasn’t enough, while he was using the BC200′s web Administrator interface, he also clicked on a few of the “Learn More…” links to find out some more technical details. We got in to the ‘Help’ menu (in the top right corner of the Administration screen) and found the tutorials. There are quite a lot of them!

We also learned that we could rightclick on an area of the screen to get help on that topic. It turned out that the System Administrator Guides have screenshots, and some of them are available in PDF format. We printed out the Receptionist Guide, just to have it on hand.

In conclusion, RTFM. That’s “Read the Fantastic Manual!” Oh – and to set up a new phone, all you have to do is plug it in to the BC200. It will automatically connect and be functional, and then you can assign it to a person or workgroup later.

-Dave.

Business Central as a PC Backup

Published April 8, 2010 Feature Highlights Leave a Comment
Tags: , , ,

Hi everyone,

Today we’ve got a simple way to save both time and money, all while keeping your data backed up in one convenient place.

Getting some kind of standard method to back up files was always on our list of ‘to do’ items here at the office, but it never seemed to be important enough to get done. Some people would burn their data to a DVD, some would copy it to a USB stick, and some just wouldn’t back up at all. Using the BC200 as a central backup makes sense for all involved. It’s a simple 4-step process to back up your My Documents folder in Windows 7 and Windows XP, so let’s get started!
Windows XP:

1. Click on “Start,” then “Accessories,” then “System Tools,” and then “Backup.” You will come to a screen like this:

2. Click “Next.” Make sure you select “My documents and settings,” otherwise your backed up files will fill the BC200 too quickly. Click ‘Next.’

3. On this screen, you can tell your computer where to save the backup file. On ours, we already set up a mapped drive to the BC200 on the Y: drive.  (The full path to the backup files is \\central\workspaces\personal\kyle perry\Backup, just in case we need to find it.)

4. Click on “Next,” and then “Finish,” and you’re done!


Windows 7:

1. Click “Start,” and open “Backup.” You will get the following screen. If you haven’t set a backup before, you’ll need to click on “Set Backup” to continue.

2. To tell the computer to save your backup to the BC200, click on “Save on a network.”

3. To tell the computer exactly where you want the files on the BC200, fill in the location. This one here is just an example – you’ll need to replace “workspaces” and “name” with the name of your workspace and person. Also, you’ll need to enter your username and password on the BC200. Click ‘OK’ to go to the next window.

4. You should select “Let Windows choose.” Click “Next” and then “Finish” on the next screen and you’re done!

Your computer will back itself up to your BC200, keeping a copy of the files in your “My Documents” folder.

That’s it for today. I hope you never need to use the backups, but if you do, you’ll be happy you took the time to set this up. (Just a quick technical note – the BC200 has two separate hard drives inside in a RAID configuration. If one of them fails, you’ll still be be able to recover your data from the other drive.) Happy computing!

-Dave.

Interoffice Calling

Published March 25, 2010 Feature Highlights , New Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , ,

Calling other office locations can be a real pain. Obviously, long distance charges can really add up, and tying up phone lines can cause missed calls. Using the BC200 to route interoffice calls over the internet keeps your telephone lines open and saves money too.

So, how does this work? All you’ll need are two or more offices with an Internet connection and a BC200 at each location. Setting it up is pretty easy – the BC200′s wizard walks you through it.

Our screenshot below shows that our home office is San Francisco. We’re directly connected to the BC200s in Vancouver, Chicago, and Boston, and we have a local telephone line available too. Via Boston, we can also reach Toronto and New York.

This allows for flexibility in call routing too. With this example, we could allow anyone from any office to place a call to the 604 or 778 area codes, regardless of their physical location. Conversely, a customer in San Francisco can call our 778 number and be seamlessly forwarded to our corporate main offices in Toronto, all with no long distance charges. And the San Francisco office doesn’t even need to be open!

Imagine this scenario: Customer Jane, in Boston, wants to talk to the Sutus sales team, but it’s 7:30pm, and her local office is closed. In the past, she’d have to do several steps.

  1. find out where other Sutus offices are located
  2. figure out the time difference
  3. find their phone numbers, and
  4. pay for the long distance call.

With Interoffice Calling and an optimized call flow, however, she just has one step:

  1. call her local office.

Their BC200 takes care of the rest.
Her call will be forwarded to Vancouver where they are still open and able to take care of her. No research, time calculations or phone charges needed.

Customers saving their money is great, but we at the office like saving too. Especially the finance department! Imagine that I’m in New York, and I need to call our importer in Toronto. I could call long distance, but that’s going to become expensive. Instead, I can use the Toronto phone line. My BC200 routes my call to Toronto, where their BC200 sends it out to the phone network. Success!

Send us a line if you have any questions – our new website has all our contact details. If you’re already a reseller, click here. If you’re an end user who is interested in the Business Central solution, click here.

That’s it for this week. Talk to you soon!

-Dave.

Managing Call Flows

Published March 3, 2010 Feature Highlights Leave a Comment

Hi everyone,
What we have today is a way to show all the call flows for the company on one screen. It’s pretty useful if you need to see where calls to your company are going, if you transfer people from department to department, or even for troubleshooting.

Here’s a screenshot with some common examples:

  • Win is a pretty important guy. When someone calls his number, the BC200 will ring every phone in the company. If he doesn’t pick up, it will then try him on his cell.
  • The Development group doesn’t take calls, so their incoming calls just terminate at their voicemail box.
  • Sales and Marketing has two members, and they’re interchangeable in terms of clients. A call for them will ring all the phones in the group, and then go to their voicemail.
  • Stephanie‘s calls mostly come from overseas, from people who are in very different time zones, so we’ve set her number to go straight to voicemail. She’ll return the calls when she comes to work.
  • Andrew Watson is the only member of the Development group, but he doesn’t want to stop working for every call the Development group gets. He’ll get calls for his extension, and if he doesn’t answer, it gets sent to the Development voicemail.
  • My Group and Test One go straight to voicemail, because they’re for testing new configurations and for temporary uses.
  • Gabe North has three destinations in his call flow. The BC200 will ring his phone, and then expand to the Reception phones, and then go to voicemail. This lets people contact him in both of the parts of the office where he works.
  • The Reception group rings all the Reception phones, and then goes to the Auto-Attendant.

Now, using the “Distinctive Ringtones” and “Send Office Voicemail Notifications to your Cell Phone” entries from a few posts ago, we can customize these flows even more, all in a simple fashion. I hope this gives you some ideas about how to improve your call flow efficiently.
-Dave.

Next Page »