Having managed 1000’s of telephone system deployments over my career, one subject continues to be the project “speed bump”. You might think that the core issues of network configuration, WAN traffic planning, QOS and DHCP services might be the issues that cause a phone system deployment to go “sideways”, but you would be wrong. Those issues clearly need to be defined, planned, developed and tested, but we always seem to get the technical issues worked out. The speeds and feeds, the duplex and the QOS always seem to become clear and the system deployment is executed as planned. I am a big fan of incremental, process improvement every day, every step of the way!
The area that always seems to require the most post cut support, however, is not the technical area. It is the User Group area in general and the entire subject of “call flow” in particular that needs more up front planning to assure a successful “go live”. When you are hammering out the details of the phone system deployment, we always seem to get the bits and bytes defined, but how about those automated attendant scripts? For reasons that I can only summarize as “procrastination”, it seems that “call flow” is the last item to be implemented! Not only has the “call flow” not been carefully considered, the scripts have not be written, reviewed or recorded. It is one hour before “go live” and most deployment managers are scrambling to get a voice to record the Automated Attendant.
On my deployment system design check list, call flow is second only to the dial plan, as a mission critical design issue. It is essential that project deployment managers engage the User Group early on, often and at each step of the deployment to assure success! Clearly without the IT Director, the network definition is going to be less than easy, but without User group buy in on “call flow” you are headed for a disaster come “go live”. I make interviewing the Company Operator a key part of our deployment planning and I make sure that there is a User group decision maker present at every planning meeting in which a “call flow” option is being discussed.
What exactly is “call flow”? Each new caller to your place of business, will have an audio experience. “Call Flow” is how we define a vision for that callers experience. Do we want each new call answered by a real person? How do we feel about the use of Automated Attendants? Will a caller have a different experience based on the “time of day” or the “day of the week”? Do all callers dial the same number? Will the “live answer” point be an individual or a group of individuals and do we have a vision of what the caller should experience if the target live answer is not available? Theses questions taken in their entirety define the subject of “call flow” and it remains one of the most important parts of your phone system definition and deployment.
There are a variety of tools that we can employ to create a “call flow”. These tools include “automated attendant” menu’s that allow callers to “self navigate” through your phone system. “Hunt groups” and “Work groups” can also be used with automated attendants to create “call flow” solutions that, while complex, are designed to assure a positive caller experience. Taking the time to consider how a call flows through your company and planning for all the eventualities (e.g. busy, no answer) is not only essential to your customer service process, but it drives professionalism and demonstrates consideration for the calling public. We have all been abused by Automated solutions, so take the time to consider the message you want to send to someone when they call your place of business. Remember. “you only get one chance to make a first impression”.
“Can we route calls to a Workgroup based on the Area Code of the Caller”, asks our intrepid Sales representative! “The prospect wants each Area Code in the country to be handled by a different Workgroup”. Interesting question. Now if we were talking about the Enterprise Contact Center, routing by Area Code would be easy, but we are talking about you basic ShoreTel IPBX and that type of routing is not obvious. If we could get the Clients to call a different number based on which Area Code they are calling from, we could use a DNIS map to point the caller at a different Workgroup. Though some phone companies actually have a value added service in which they can route a call to a different DID based on the ANI ShoreTel needs some additional functionality to achieve this level of call routing.
Maybe we could use ShoreTel “Call handling modes” to get the job done? Features like “Personal Operator” and “Find/Follow Me” are offered to callers once they are in your Voice message box and they can be very useful by offering callers options beyond leaving a message at the beep! Call handling modes, however, can only be applied after the call is answered! What is required in the application described above, is the ability to manipulate a “ringing” telephone call and redirect that call before the call is answered. So how would you route a call based on the callers Area Code?
ShoreTel has a new feature entitled “personalized call handling”. This is a powerful feature that can be used to manipulate a phone call before it is answered. You can route a call based on a number of conditions including a “phone number match”, the fact that you are already on the phone, based on the number the caller dialed or DNIS and even by the time of day or day of week. Based on the condition you specifiy, actions can be executed that include forwarding teh call to a specific number or play a different ring tone. If you select the condition “Phone number match”, for example, you can further define a specific internal or external number, and off-premise extension, a number marked as “private? or an “any external number starting with” and fill in the blank.
Imagine sending all incoming “private” numbers to “Dail a Prayer”! You could really have some fun with this feature, but let us see if we can solve the above application. Set this user up to foward calls to the NY Sales Workgroup, but looking at the Area Code of the calling number. You can actually do this! To make this work as in the above application you will have to dedicate a USER to the applicaiton. After you create the user and setup the “personal call handling” conditions and actions, you will need to change the DESTINATION of the incoming Trunk Group, to be this user. Make sure you set the Call Stack for this user sufficiently high enought to handle the anticipated call volume. The following film clip walks you through the setup of the Professional Call Manager to achieve the desired application results.“Can we route calls to a Workgroup based on the Area Code of the Caller”, asks our intrepid Sales representative!“The prospect wants each Area Code in the country to be handled by a different Workgroup”.Interesting question.Now if we were talking about the Enterprise Contact Center, routing by Area Code would be easy, but we are talking about you basic ShoreTel IPBX and that type of routing is not obvious.If we could get the Clients to call a different number based on which Area Code they are calling from, we could use a DNIS map to point the caller at a different Workgroup.Though some phone companies actually have a value added service in which they can route a call to a different DID based on the ANI ShoreTel needs some additional functionality to achieve this level of call routing.
Maybe we could use ShoreTel “Call handling modes” to get the job done?Features like “Personal Operator” and “Find/Follow Me” are offered to callers once they are in your Voice message box and they can be very useful by offering callers options beyond leaving a message at the beep!Call handling modes, however, can only be applied after the call is answered!What is required in the application described above, is the ability to manipulate a “ringing” telephone call and redirect that call before the call is answered.So how would you route a call based on the callers Area Code?
ShoreTel has a new feature entitled “personalized call handling”.This is a powerful feature that can be used to manipulate a phone call before it is answered.You can route a call based on a number of conditions including a “phone number match”, the fact that you are already on the phone, based on the number the caller dialed or DNIS and even by the time of day or day of week.Based on the condition you specify, actions can be executed that include forwarding the call to a specific number or play a different ring tone.If you select the condition “Phone number match”, for example, you can further define a specific internal or external number, and off-premise extension, a number marked as “private? or an “any external number starting with” and fill in the blank.
Imagine sending all incoming “private” numbers to “Dial a Prayer”!You could really have some fun with this feature, but let us see if we can solve the above application.Set this user up to forward calls to the NY Sales Work group, but looking at the Area Code of the calling number.You can actually do this!To make this work as inthe above application you will have to dedicate a USER to the application.After you create the user and setup the “personal call handling” conditions and actions, you will need to change the DESTINATION of the incoming Trunk Group, to be this user.Make sure you set the Call Stack for this user sufficiently high enough to handle the anticipated call volume.The following film clip walks you through the setup of the Professional Call Manager to achieve the desired application results.!
Recently a client discoverd that at terminated employee, gone for almost a month, was still answering his office extension from his cell phone! We have so many technology options for mobility today that the HR deparment most be going nuts trying to keep the “exit interview” check list up to date! Without commenting on the HR ramifications, IT system administrators have long had to contend with terminated employees and how to handle remote access, email and the other regular components of an advanced Information Technology. With the advent of VoIP, most IT organizations have now had to add the telephone system to the growing list of security access concerens.
This blog and video clip was created to knock off a couple of concepts simultaneously. First, adminstrators want to know how to configure permissions for different user types. Clearly the folks who work in the call center are supervised by managers that require a set of features that might enable monitoring, barge in and call recording. The Kitchen and Lobby phone do not need voice mail boxes and should only be enabled for extension to extension calling and 911 service. Do we need to set up Account Codes for International dialing? Who must enter an Accout code to make a phone call and who has Supreme being features? The list goes on. Do you allow your Users to reassign there extensions to external numbers, like the home office or cell phone? If that employee leaves the company, do you have a plan in place as to how to manage that employees incoming phone calls? This is where the concept of a ShoreTel Use Group can be exploited to rapidly nail down departing employees call flow.
The concept of a “containeer” as a mechnism for treating a class of users has been utilized as a programming convention since the first bit stream. Microsoft System administrators will be immediatley comfortable with the concept, as will any IT professional who has system administration responsibility. The concept is simple: rather than create a each individual and then list out their permissions, previldeges and class of service; lets “contain” them in a “group” and apply the permissions against the group. This makes it easy to administer large populations of users who may share similar system facilities. In ShoreTel, the concept of class of service, is defined and applied to a container named “User Group”.
Out of the box, ShoreTel has a predefined family of User Groups arbitraily but apptly named Exeucitve, Manager, Staff and so on. Each user group contains a set of permissions defined as a Class of Service. These services include permissions regarding the telephony features available to this user, the users dialing restrictions and also define key attributes about the users Voice Mail box. In ShoreTel, certain features like “call forwarding” and “find me/follow me” require the user to have a Voice Mailbox, so understanding how these permissions are configured is essential to the creation of a secruity policy for your phone system. If you allow the use of “find me follow me” or the ShoreTel “Personal Operator” funtion you might want to limit the range that those calling permission might include. (If you want to talk to Mom in Italy, call my extension after hours and press zero when you here my greeting” is one of my personal favorites).
The video clip walks you through the process of creating a new User Group aptly named “Terminated Employee”. This User Group then encompasses a body of restrictions that can be applied to a User, in this case a departing employee, with just a couple of key strokes. The goal here is to nail down the employees call flow while you are working out the details of transitioning the employees work flow. Clearly, you can just delete the user and be done with it, but normally business is not that simple. Employees are part of Work Groups or Hunt Groups that define a work flow and sometimes it takes a transition plan to get the details worked out. In the mean time, we need to secure the phone!
Recently a client discovered that at terminated employee, gone for almost a month, was still answering his office extension from his cell phone! We have so many technology options for mobility today that the HR department most be going nuts trying to keep the “exit interview” check list up to date! Without commenting on the HR ramifications, IT system administrators have long had to contend with terminated employees and how to handle remote access, email and the other regular components of an advanced Information Technology. With the advent of VoIP, most IT organizations have now had to add the telephone system to the growing list of security access concerns.
This blog and video clip was created to knock off a couple of concepts simultaneously. First, administrator want to know how to configure permissions for different user types. Clearly the folks who work in the call center are supervised by managers that require a set of features that might enable monitoring, barge in and call recording. The Kitchen and Lobby phone do not need voice mail boxes and should only be enabled for extension to extension calling and 911 service. Do we need to set up Account Codes for International dialing? Who must enter an Account code to make a phone call and who has Supreme being features? The list goes on. Do you allow your Users to reassign there extensions to external numbers, like the home office or cell phone? If that employee leaves the company, do you have a plan in place as to how to manage that employees incoming phone calls? This is where the concept of a ShoreTel Use Group can be exploited to rapidly nail down departing employees call flow.
The concept of a “container” as a mechanism for treating a class of users has been utilized as a programming convention since the first bit stream. Microsoft System administrators will be immediately comfortable with the concept, as will any IT professional who has system administration responsibility. The concept is simple: rather than create a each individual and then list out their permissions, privileges and class of service; lets “contain” them in a “group” and apply the permissions against the group. This makes it easy to administer large populations of users who may share similar system facilities. In ShoreTel, the concept of class of service, is defined and applied to a container named “User Group”.
Out of the box, ShoreTel has a predefined family of User Groups arbitrarily but apply named Executive, Manager, Staff and so on. Each user group contains a set of permissions defined as a Class of Service. These services include permissions regarding the telephony features available to this user, the users dialing restrictions and also define key attributes about the users Voice Mail box. In ShoreTel, certain features like “call forwarding” and “find me/follow me” require the user to have a Voice Mailbox, so understanding how these permissions are configured is essential to the creation of a security policy for your phone system. If you allow the use of “find me follow me” or the ShoreTel “Personal Operator” function you might want to limit the range that those calling permission might include. (If you want to talk to Mom in Italy, call my extension after hours and press zero when you here my greeting” is one of my personal favorites).
The video clip walks you through the process of creating a new User Group aptly named “Terminated Employee”. This User Group then encompasses a body of restrictions that can be applied to a User, in this case a departing employee, with just a couple of key strokes. The goal here is to nail down the employees call flow while you are working out the details of transitioning the employees work flow. Clearly, you can just delete the user and be done with it, but normally business is not that simple. Employees are part of Work Groups or Hunt Groups that define a work flow and sometimes it takes a transition plan to get the details worked out. In the mean time, we need to secure the phone!
