Posts Tagged 'cool feature'

Next Entries »

Phone System Reliability – PoE and UPS

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

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
Tags: , ,

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
Tags: ,

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.

Traffic Shaping for Improved VoIP Call Quality

Published August 17, 2009 Feature Highlights Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

Working phones are an essential part of any office. The flexibility and features of VoIP have strong advantages over traditional phone lines. However, I noticed that VoIP sound quality can suffer during times of heavy internet usage. An unclear phone call can reflect negatively on a business and its reputation.

I called Sutus Support and asked about improving call quality. At their suggestion, I looked into the Internet Connection Settings of the Business Central 200, and found the section on Internet Rate Control Settings.Internet Rate Control (also called Traffic Shaping or Quality of Service) allows us to prioritize our internet traffic for VoIP. The BC200 has all we need built in, including a connection speed tester. Let’s go into Administration and see what’s there.

After entering your login and password, click on the ‘Internet Settings’ tool and then the ‘Internet Rate Control Settings’ tab. There should be a red X showing that rate control is off. Click on the ‘Change Rate Control Settings’ button, and then click the ‘On’ radio button. It’s easier to measure the upload and download speeds automatically, but you can enter values manually if you know the numbers for your internet connection. Ideally, and for the most accurate results, measurement should happen when there is no other internet traffic. After hours is probably best, and don’t forget to quit your email and instant messaging programs before starting! Click ‘OK’ so the BC200 can carry out a speed test and configure itself internally.

QoS Settings

After the speed test has completed, the BC200 will display the measured speeds. Most DSL and cable connections are asynchronous (greater speeds downloading,) while T1s and are synchronous (equal speeds for downloading and uploading.) Try the test several times at different times of the day, and enter the greatest numbers. Your ISP can tell you the speeds for your connection as well. Click the ‘OK’ box, and you’re done.

Something interesting that I found out from the support staff is that Sutus has done some extra work with their implementation of traffic shaping. Most others just control the outgoing traffic, but the BC200 controls both ingoing and outgoing. This helps ensure that all participants in your VoIP conversation can hear and be heard clearly. The BC200 allots a portion of your connection to VoIP traffic and reserves it for the duration of the phone call. It’s dynamic, too – if another call is made, the BC200 will reserve its traffic as well.

I was a bit worried that this feature would affect my downloading speeds all the time, not just when I’m on the phone. It turns out, though, that traffic shaping only takes effect when a VoIP connection is made. The downloading speeds seem as fast as they were before!

So there you have it. Greater call quality for your business and your callers without sacrificing download speed, all with a few clicks.

-Dave.

Cool Feature – Analog Overhead Paging!

Published February 25, 2009 Feature Highlights 2 Comments
Tags: ,

The ‘cool feature’ we highlight in this installment comes courtesy of our very own Michael Flanagan, our support manager here at Sutus, and is one of those features that is not ‘obvious’ to everyone. In fact, unless you were specifically asking for it, you probably didn’t even know support for Overhead Paging was built in to Business Central! 

Analog Overhead Paging

Commonly found in retail environments as well as those with an outdoor area, overhead paging offers the ability to make a public announcement over a speaker by using the phone on your desk. Think of situations like grocery stores or markets that need to call out for an additional teller to be added from somewhere in the back, or a car dealership or a lumberyard where they need to let someone outside know that there is a call waiting for them inside; they all need overhead paging systems.

Business Central has a couple of ways to deliver overhead paging, both of them a snap to setup. If you need a quick and easy paging system, simply find a pair of regular old amplified speakers that you would normally use with your computer and plug them in to the audio out port on your Business Central 200.

Business Central - Audio Out port

Once they’re plugged in, dial ‘**’ from any Polycom phone and enjoy the sweet sound of your first paging message!

For a more robust and flexible paging system, plug just about any analog overhead paging system into the audio out port and the same dialing ‘**’ from any phone will trigger the overhead paging – does it get any easier?

You will need a 3.5mm stereo or mono audio cable to make this work and each paging system is different and will require its own specific configuration, but getting it to work with the ‘audio-out’ port on the BC200 will not be a challenge.

Let us know if you are using overhead paging and how it is working for you!

« Previous Page