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Free/Busy Calendar Integration

Published February 11, 2010 Feature Highlights Leave a Comment
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Hi everyone,

Some of the crew in Sutus Support mentioned that asking about integrating a Free/Busy calendar from Outlook was a popular topic, so I decided to do some research. There’s a good article in the Help files, but why go there when you are already here?

First of all, a free/busy calendar is not just a calendar for one person. It is a calendar that combines many schedules and displays them on one page. This really saves time when you are booking appointments or scheduling team meetings, to name but two examples. Essentially, when a person publishes their Outlook calendar to the Business Central, that schedule information becomes available to other employees.

Enough of the talk, Dave. How do we do this? Well, if you’ve used the BC200′s Install Wizard, your Outlook calendar is already ready to use. If you haven’t, or you have recently upgraded your systems, or you just want to know what’s happening under the hood, read on.

These instructions may not be exact if you’re using a different version of Outlook. Here is what to do if you’re using Outlook 2003. (This is all in the BC200 Help files, if you get stuck.)

  1. In Microsoft Outlook, select the Tools menu, and then go to Options.
  2. Click on the Calendar Options button, and then click the Free/Busy Options button.
  3. Check the Publish at My Location checkbox, and then put http://central.YOURDOMAIN:8080/freebusy/daveco.vfb into the Publish at My Location text box. Be sure that you have entered it exactly as in the example! Now replace “daveco” with your Business Central logon name, and “YOURDOMAIN” with your domain name.
  4. Fill in the Search location text box exactly as follows: http://central.YOURDOMAIN:8080/freebusy/%NAME%.vfb This time, don’t change YOURDOMAIN or %NAME%, though.

Now, your Outlook calendar appointments will be visible to other people when they are scheduling appointments in their Outlook. Be careful, though – the Business Central does not support calendar sharing, which is when you can see other people’s calendar information in your own calendar.

It’s hard to be excited about a calendar, I know, but it’s simple to see how this can increase efficiency around the office. I’ll write again next week, as I see that I’m free at 4:30…

-Dave.

Distinctive Ringtones

Published January 28, 2010 Feature Highlights , New 4 Comments
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Hi everyone,

Something new this week! Sutus has released their newest software update (version 1.7.1 available upon request starting today), and I heard about a few new features that seem promising. I’ll be sending out some articles on these over the next while, but today I’m going to introduce Distinctive Ringtones.

I can hear the groans already. “But we can already choose the ringtones on our phones! Why is this news?” Actually, this is much better than just selecting a distinctive ring for your own phone. It’s more like audible CallerID – any call for a specific workspace will ring with the same ringtone, regardless of which physical phone it is.

It’s simple to use. Let’s go into Business Central Manager and get to work. Once you’ve entered your password, click on the “Manage Workspaces,” then highlight the name of the workspace to modify, click on “Edit Properties,” then “Phone Service,” and lastly “Incoming Call Flow.” You can select the ringtone under the “Ring Type” dropdown menu. The default is to use the ring type selected on the phone, but this can override that selection. Also, I can change my own settings as well as the settings for groups that I’m in.

This works in tandem with the Call Flow feature to ‘announce’ the destination of a call, whether it is for a specific person or a specific department. Sometimes a caller wants to speak to Jill, and sometimes they want to speak to someone in Support. We can ring the same physical phone with a different tone for each of these situations.

Imagine a room used for planning and design. There might be 5 or 6 phones in the room, and lets say that they are in the call flows for personal workspaces as well as shared ones. When a phone rings, everyone needs to check to see if it is their phone, and they also need to see if it is a call that concerns them. Running back and forth to check the call display can really disrupt the creativity of this team! However, if there is a different ring for each of the people or teams present, those not concerned with the call can just ignore it.

As you can see, this makes it pretty easy to find out who the call is for when you are close to, but not looking at, the phone. I should warn you, though, that this only works with Polycom phones, not the Handy-Tone or softphones.

This is available as a limited release, so if you’re interested, just drop a line to the Sutus Support team at support@sutus.com

-Dave.

One Number to Call Them

Published January 14, 2010 Feature Highlights Leave a Comment
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Hi everyone,

I want my customers to get a hold of my people easily. Isn’t it frustrating to have to remember two or three business phone numbers just to talk to one person? Get a competitive edge and make your people easy to contact by optimizing your Call Flow.

Case 1 – The Mobile Employee

Jim, our service tech, usually works offsite, but in town. He starts and ends his day at the office, so he needs to be contactable, but he doesn’t want to give out his cell numbers to clients. When somebody calls Jim’s extension, the BC200 will ring his desk phone first, in case he is in the office, and then forward the call to his cell phone using an external line.

Case 2 – He’s Overseas

Daniel, our traveling sales agent, is often out of the country, and he’d like to have an ‘office phone’ while overseas. Calling his extension here will ring his desk phone and his softphone (communications software that acts like a telephone) at the same time. If he doesn’t answer, the caller will be directed to the Auto-Attendant. The caller will think he is in the office down the street, but he’ll really be in Germany, connected to our BC200 with a VPN! As a bonus, the VPN allows him secure access to his email, the internet connection in the office, shared documents, and even the office printer.

Case 3 – Her desk is here, but she works over there…

Renata is a designer, but she spends a lot of time collaborating with Jean in the production department. She needs to be available wherever she is. Here, the BC200 will direct the incoming call to Renata’s desk phone, then ring Jean’s phone in the engineering department, and then terminate the call back at Renata’s voicemail.

Case 4 – Like a Pager

Dr. Beesie doesn’t want to take non-emergency calls while in the clinic, but she wants to get messages. In this case, the BC200 doesn’t ring a phone – it just terminates the call at her voicemail. The good doctor can then return her calls as time permits. (Using the last tip, we could forward the notification emails to her cell phone… just to give you a few ideas!)

Case 5 – Anyone Will Do

Our tech support department has many workers – Bill, Steve, and Eric, to name just three – and they can all help our clients. Someone calling Bill will ring his desk phone, then to all the phones in the Tech Support shared workspace, and then to the voicemail for the tech support shared workspace.

Set It Up.

Here’s how to do it. Call flows are editable under the Edit Workspace tab – just double click the workspace name, select Phone Service, and choose Incoming Call Flow. We can have up to three sequential destinations for an incoming call. Each destination can be a physical phone, a softphone, a forwarding number, a voice mailbox, or the Auto-Attendant. Just start at the top of the page and work down, and that’s the order the BC200 will follow when it receives a call.

So, what’s the secret? There really isn’t one. We need to remember that the BC200 frees us from the old idea that ‘each phone has one extension number, and that’s that.’ Just give your clients one extension, and let the BC200 and your Call Flow keep you in touch wherever you are! Have any questions? Just call me at the office, and I’ll be there… or will I?

-Dave.

Send Office Voicemail Notifications to your Cell Phone

Published December 7, 2009 3rd party products , Feature Highlights 1 Comment
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Hi there,

Wouldn’t it be convenient to get a text message whenever a voice mail was left for you at work?

One of our sales guys was out of the office but on the phone a lot, and he couldn’t get his email notifications of voice messages at the office. Normally he would just check his email on a smartphone, but he doesn’t have a data package! Here’s a way around that situation.

Your BC200 emails you whenever you get a voicemail – mine goes to my Gmail account. I set up a filter that says “If the subject contains ‘voicemail,’ forward it to ‘myphonenumber@mycellcarrier.com.’ It’s pretty simple – here’s the whole process:

  1. Someone leaves a voicemail on the BC200.
  2. The BC200 emails my Gmail account, saying I have a voicemail.
  3. Gmail forwards that email to my cellphone carrier.
  4. My cellphone carrier sends an SMS message to my phone.

Data packages cost money, but most cell companies offer free incoming SMS messages.

I hope this little tip helps you make the most of your BC200. Until next time,

- Dave.

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.


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