When someone is on your website, it is like they entered your store. Clearly, they have an interest in what you are about or they would not be there. It is at this moment that they are most receptive to learning about your product and services. Would you not like to know when someone hits your website? Better yet, would you like an opportunity to interact with a visitor to your website? If so, you want to enable a CHAT function, a link that says “connect with a company representative now”! Clicking that link opens a real time conversation channel with an internal human resource at your company! Research proves that the sales conversion rate on these transactions are without equal. Do you suffer from “shopping cart” abandonment? Maybe that last minute question could have been answered if your site had a Shoretel Chat function!
ShoreTel ECC 7 Website Chat
Contact Centers are different that call centers in just that way. In a contact center we know that people interact not just by phone, but by email and web interactions like Shoretel Chat. If you are running even a small contact center, you need to experience the high impact customer development strategy of enabling Chat on your website. The application is relatively straight forward, especially if you have a contact center operation. It is hard to find a company today that does not have some kind of web presence, so why not integrate the two?
The ShoreTel Enteprise Contact Center has a real time ShoreTel Chat function. Visitors to your online store can click on a link that immediately opens a chat window with the next available Agent. The same rules and options that govern your handling of an inbound voice call, can be applied to a Chat session. Chat sessions can be “queued” for the next available agent and will even show up on the Supervisors display as a customer waiting for service!
ShoreTel Website Chat Doesn’t end here
The transcript of a Chat session can be automagically emailed to the website visitor, and a copy can also be sent to the contact center for archive. Chat sessions are presented to your Agents in manner that is consistent with the behavior they employ on a voice call. They see the Chat session “ringing” in on their tool bar, click answer and a browser window opens up and they can are now in a real time Chat session with a visitor out on the world wide web. Agents can select from per-authored files and screen of information that can be sent through the Chat session with a mouse click.
Chat is among the most valuable customer interaction tools that you can add to your arsenal of sales aids. It can often mean filling a shopping cart that might have otherwise been abandoned! The film clip give you an overview of how to implement Chat using the ShoreTel Contact Center!
As both a ShoreTel Certified VoIP Engineer and a CISCO CCVP I have been working exclusively in VoIP since 1998. For this reason, one of the questions that is most asked of me is which is a better solution: ShoreTel and CISCO? Since I have the sales skills of Attila the Hun, I assume that the question is being asked because someone is truly interested in understanding the architecture of the two systems. At the end of the day most people just want to pick up the handset, hear that warm reassuring sound of the dial tone, press some digits and talk to their target! How that all happens is generally of little interest to the average user. So why else would you ask that question unless you were generally interested in understanding the two systems and how they compare when resolving traditional telephony applications. I thought it might be useful to drill down on the two solutions in a few key areas toward the goal of understanding how they both work.
First, which systems to compare? CISCO actually has a family of VoIP solutions under the brand banner of Cisco Unified Call Manager. For example, they have a small 24 user system that is marketed under the model 320W. The next model up would be the UC500 series, then the CUCM-Express and finally the CUCM. Even the CUCM has different models. The most recent edition, the Cisco Unified Call Manager Business Edition Version 8 is a 500 seat, 5 site variation of the full blown 40,000 user Cisco Unified Call Manager. Since ShoreTel actually has only one product family that can take you from 25-10,000 users, I chose to use the Cisco Unified Call Manager Business Edition (CUCM BE8) as our comparison product.
Both product lines support a range of Unified Communications Options that include Contact Center, Presence, IM, Video Conferencing and Microsoft Integration. The list of options goes on and on, so where do we draw the line in our comparison? My thinking is that we stay focused on the basics: the telephone and Voice Messaging System. In this way we can look at the two architectures and free ourselves from the additional servers most of the options will require. Lets keep it simple!
Let me first make a blanket statement about telephone system features and “feature sets”. For a very brief period on the calendar, one system might have a feature that the other system does not have. Understand that within six months, both systems will not only achieve parity, but will reverse roles. The one that did not have the missing feature, will now have it and the other one will be missing one! My sense of it is, that you would no sooner buy a phone system because you like the color of the phone than you would because it had a feature that was not available in the other system. I guess it is possible that someone would make a purchase decision based on that criteria but features are maturing all the time and with major feature releases usually twice a year, all phone systems achieve feature parity very quickly. So this brief comparison is not going to talk about features at all. They are both the same, lets drive on.
One high impact characteristic that is of immediate interest, however, is the concept of Software Versions. ShoreTel is currently running on release 12, having migrated over the last ten years from Version 3. Without exception, each release of ShoreTel has been backwardly compatible with the previous version of ShoreTel. What this means is that If you purchased hardware from ShoreTel in 2001, you can upgrade it today to Version 12 in 2011. Both companies have been slowly migrating away from Microsoft. ShoreTel and CISCO both came to market using Microsoft Servers and Microsoft database utilities. CISCO has moved more aggressively in this area, shedding Microsoft Server for Linux, but with a heavy toll on the installed base. If you were on Version 4.x of Cisco Call Manger there is no easy upgrade path to CUCM BE8 and prior versions are either not supported or end of life.
ShoreTel is still using Microsoft Servers though one might project a product road map in which they move to Linux. Historically, ShoreTel used Microsoft Access as the configuration database for its phone system and call detail records. By Version 8 ShoreTel had moved from Microsoft Access to MySQL for all of its database requirements. This transition was made with nominal breakage and early ShoreTel adopters can continue to upgrade to later versions of ShoreTel. CISCO database was built on Microsoft SQL engine. Cisco release 4.2 ran on Windows 2000 and Version 4.3 was implemented on MCS OS 2003 a Cisco proprietary version of Microsoft. With the release of CUCM 5, Cisco moved to the IBM Informix database running on a Linux engine (Cisco VOS). Cisco 6 moved to Linux Red Hat Enterprise and would no longer support the previous Windows based Call Managers. Cisco Version 8 was introduced in 2010 and is now the current release for the entire CUCM product line.
ShoreTel uses the Microsoft Server family and currently supports Windows 2008 64 bit OS servers. Cisco began to support virtualization under VMware in Version 8. ShoreTel began to support VMware virtualization in release 11.2. Generally ShoreTel will allow you to pick your own hardware provided it meets the basic server requirements for the release being implemented. Cisco requires the use of an approved MCS server, generally an HP or IBM hardware platform. A key difference is that under Cisco, the server is considered to be an “appliance”. Aside from being able to set up the network parameters, the root is completely unavailable to the maintenance of the system. On a ShoreTel system, you have complete access to the underlying OS as the system administrator. Treating the hardware as an “appliance” while hiding the OS does have its advantages from a support perspective. On the other hand, most IT managers will be very uncomfortable with a server that does not allow access to the base OS.
Culturally, Cisco is defined by extension numbers and ShoreTel is defined by Users. It is a subtle but very interesting differential. Both systems will allow you to auto provision a group of phones. In Cisco you can arrange to automatically assign a range of extension numbers sequentially to phones as they come up and register on the network. The auto registration process can also assign calling permissions to those phones. In ShoreTel you can bring up a group of phones and they will automatically register over the network with the system. The ShoreTel phones will, however, not have extension numbers. They will be “available” which means they can not be called until they have a User assigned to the phone! This means the calling permissions are based on the User not the Extension number. Cisco allows you to assign a User to the phone, but the concept of an extension can exist independently of a User profile.
Both solutions offer the ability to integrated geographically distributed locations into a single call handling plan. ShoreTel has a distributed call processing model and Cisco uses a centralized call processing model. When Cisco is deployed using a distributed call processing model, this means that a separate Call Manager cluster is setup at that remote location. The deployment models for both systems can get complex quickly, but the best way to understand the impact of the deployment model chosen is to study the failure mode. In the Cisco model, your phone registers with a Call Manager server. No Call Manager Server, no dial tone. For this reason the Cisco best practice is to have multiple Cisco Call Managers in a cluster that phones can register with in the event of a single Call Manager failure. The ShoreTel solution has the phone register with a Shoregear switch, a hardware appliance or what Cisco would call a “media gateway”. If the ShoreTel HQ server fails, the phones still have dial tone and phone calls in and out are still completed. If the Shoregear hardware appliance that a phone is registered with fails, the phone can register with another resource anywhere in the system. The loss of the ShoreTel Server has impact only on the Voice Mail and Automated Attendant.
Both systems make use of similar call processing protocols, most notable of which is MGCP. Cisco phones communicate with their Call Manager using a Cisco proprietary signaling protocol referred to as “skinny” or SCCP. The Call Manager communicates with its Media Gateways using MGCP if it is loc ally attached or H323 if it is a Gateway across the WAN at another site. ShoreTel phones communicate with the Shoregear Switch they have registered with using MGCP protocol. The Shoregear switches communicate with each other using SIP. Both systems also support SIP end points including SIP extensions and SIP trunk lines.
System administration and support are also key areas in which you will want to drill down for comparison purposes. The best way to understand this difference is to actually log into both systems and do something useful like add a user. ShoreTel has a single web portal in which the system definition is configured and through which adds, moves and changes are made. This is one very key differences in the architectures of these solutions. Remember, the ShoreTel is a self contained solution that includes the Voice Mail system. The Cisco solution requires a separate Unity Connector voice messaging system. So when adding a user for example, in the ShoreTel you would create your user and simultaneously create the directory listing and voice mailbox. In Cisco this would be separately configured system administration interfaces.
ShoreTel Shoregear Media Gateways, are very similar to Cisco gateways but differ in how they are configured. Bringing up a T1/PRI at a remote site in ShoreTel is no different that building out a T1/PRI in a locally attached Gateway. It is all done through the ShoreTel administration web portal. In Cisco, you would define your T1/PRI gateway, but you may be required to actually go to that device and code at the IOS command level. You can use the Cisco web administration portal to define the gateway device, but the device itself is often configured separately in IOS.
I think I will leave the entire subject of fail over to a dedicated blog on that subject. Again both solutions have a strategy for dealing with the loss of a WAN link, and they provide for the continued operation of the disconnected remote site. How they each do this, is really quite different and deserving of a dedicated blog. The issue at this point, is how to administer that fail over capability and how to configure the system for continue operation. Cisco SRST (Survivable Remote Site Telephony) is an interesting set of administration tasks that requires a bit of explanation. Basically a remote site becomes a Cisco CCME and continues on as an independent operating entitiy and will require manual intervention to bring it back into the main system when the Wan is available. ShoreTel, requires no additional configuration beyond what was defined in the original system deployment and no manual intervention is required.
The film clip below reviews most of this text, but will also show you what to expect when you log into each solution. First we take a look at the ShoreTel solution and then we log in and take a quick tour of the Cisco administration portal.
Adding Users in ShoreTel is among the most common tasks a system administrator will be expected to perform. We suspect once the ShoreTel solution is fully deployed, you will generally not have to tweak Trunks, Switches and Application Servers, but you will always be handling requests from USERS to make changes. These changes will run from adding New Users to changing the feature access of existing Users. Most User options can actually be changed by the Users themselves but often they will call System Administration or the “help desk” and expect your assistance. ShoreTel Users have wide range of very rich features that they can configure to meet operating business goals. The list of features ranges form “twinning” to “find me follow me”, call handling modes, and “personal operators”. There is also a range of options for customizing ring tones, wall paper, Communicator Tool Bars, and phone buttons. Adding users is easy! Understanding feature configuration options and how they interact with the ShoreTel system requires a bit more study.
Generally, ShoreTel phone extensions to not exist without an associated User. This is a cultural issue as much as an architectural issue. In a CISCO deployment, for example, it is very possible to setup auto-registration and allow a range of new phone to plug into the network, register with the Call Manager, obtain an extension number and be come a fully functional phone. In the ShoreTel architecture a phone can register with the ShoreTel sever but it does not receive an extension number until a User account has been associated with the device. These are modest but interesting differences in iPBX architectures.
We also have the concept of Class of Service and User Groups when we consider user configurations. All systems generally have this concept. Again, in a CISCO deployment you would work with Partitions and Calling Search Spaces and they are virtually the same as User Groups and Class of Service permission containers. ShoreTel has a very flexible User Group and Class of Service container strategy that is easy to configure, manage and assign. Generally, we want to create individual User accounts, but we often want to make changes to a Groups of Users. For this reason there is a handy Batch utility for making it easy to make mass changes to your system configuration.
Working with User configurations is an essential part of ShoreTel System Administration. The attached video clip outlines the process of making User Configuration Changes in ShoreTel using Version 12 of ShoreTel ShoreWareDirector!
We have been experimenting with mobility options for some time now, setting up SIP phones on mobile devices like the iPhone. ShoreTel has a range of mobility options, most of which we have discussed here in previous blogs, so setting up a softphone is nothing new for ShoreTel. Recently, I discovered a new SIP softphone by CouterPath Corporation the company that brought you X-Lite, one of the most popular free phones on the net. The new offering is named Bria and is ideally suited for your iPad. Bria is a more of a “carrier grade” softphone enabling both voice and video calls over IP, the ability to send IM messages and transfer files to your contacts. I particularly like the option of downloading additional Codecs like G729 which is really useful for a ShoreTel remote phone. Bria also has Enterprise features like LDAP/Active Directory integration and some Workgroup capabilities like a Busy Lamp Field. Most importantly it seamlessly integrates with your iPad VPN which brings me back to ShoreTel.
We have configured a bunch of different SIP phones to work with ShoreTel. Candidly, they all work really well internally, on the Enterprise WiFi. Setting SIP up on ShoreTel is a relatively straight forward process. Pick an ShoreGear switch in the site you are planning to register with and set up a port for SIP. You do this through the drop down menu on the SG switch through ShorewareDirector. Set the port for 100 SP Proxies. Note the IP address of the switch. Now you have to set up your USER and note the SIP password for that User. When you setup your softphone you will need this information so keep it handy! (In the library there is a Video Cheat Sheet that shows you how to set up SIP in ShoreTel). The Bria setup is also very straight forward. Remember that when it asks for Account Name it wants the Extension number of the USER you created in ShoreTel. Put the IP address of the ShoreGear switch that provides proxy services as the Domain and enter the SIP password you created for the USER. The Display Name can be whatever you want.
The Bria phone should register if you have WiFi and you should be set to use your iPad as your ShoreTel extension. This is great for wandering around your own facility. If you have the ShoreTel ”WebAgentDashboard” you can wander around your Call Center with a Supervisor Real Time display and have a ShoreTel extension with you the entire time. Kool stuff, but what about when you are at Starbucks or some other location? How will your Bria connect with ShoreTel? We have successfully created a L2TP VPN back to the ShoreTel Server from both the iPhone and the iPad. Apple cleverly built a VPN client into all devices. Once the VPN is operational, you can bring up your Bria softphone and extend your ShoreTel extension to any location that has WiFi access. Optionally, you can bring the Bria connection up over your G3 data network. You can extend that Supervisor Real Time Display as well! The Bria comes up and completes a SIP registration with the ShoreTel and the performance is remarkable.
At first I had some reservations about using the Bria on an VPN over G3. Establishing the VPN tunnel, then running a Ping back to the Server, indicated Latency in the 425 ms range! Not exactly within the recommended target of 150ms mouth to ear. None the less, it worked and was very usable. We are fooling around with using the Bria as an IM agent on the ShoreTel Collaboration server (see previous blog) and I guess we will figure out how to make use of the Bria video and presence.
At the end of the day, you have a range of Mobility options on the ShoreTel and you should figure out which option is the most effective for your mode of operation. It is very possible to take your office extension with you, in fact we think the Desktop is dead! Your cell phone is your desktop!
The blog on the ShoreTel Mobility Router as one of the options offered by ShoreTel for remote worker connectivity, generated a lot of email requests. I have an opportunity to install, configure and test the solution including the Roam Anywhere Client on an iPhone. It is really a great product and should be well received in the market for campus wireless as well as for the growing Mobile workforce. The attached video provides a quick overview of the SMR System Administration Interface and is not meant to be a tutorial on the subject, just a quick tour of the basic admin portal.
System configuration is relatively straight forward, but very specific. Without getting into the infrastructure requirements, there are steps in the configuration that must be accomplished to bring up a useable platform. The SMR will connect to your PBX using both SIP Extensions and SIP trunks. Licenses, Authentication SSL Certifications, Time Servers, DID numbers and Network Interfaces are all necessary components to a successful deployment. The ShoreTel Roam Anywhere Client or RAC, can be downloaded from the Mobility Router itself for Crackberry and Nokia, or from the Apple AP store if you are installing on an iphone.
We were able to use a ShoreTel SIP extension and drag it half way round the world to China! It worked flawlessly. The RAC comes up, attempts to register with the local server IP through a WiFi connection and failing that, negotiates a SIP registration through the public IP as an SSL connection. Once provisioning has completed, you have a fully functional Extension on your state side ShoreTel PBX as a SIP extension. You can place extension to extension calls and dial 9 calls as if you were standing in your home office. A call to your primary extension is typically set to ring both your desk phone and your SIP extension out over the Campus WIFi or over the internet to the WiFi WAP nearest you. Answering on your iPhone SIP extension and nobody would know you were working remotely. Think of the cost savings!
The ROC will attempt a WiFI connection first, then try over your Cellular Data plan and then finally a Cell Call. The router tracks all of that and reconfiguration happens automatically. You might want to set your ROC to use WIFi only. If you do not have a local access number where you are traveling, the Cell Call will be back to the SMR DID stateside, entering the router as a SIP trunk. Setting the Network options to WiFi Only assure that all your calls are made through the Secure Voice facility, basically an SSL connection over WiFi to a public IP address that port forwards to your mobility router. The router requires care and feeding and constant monitoring, but the platform has a wide range of maintenance and troubleshooting tools. The documentation is excellent, but your deployment team will need expertise in SIP, telephony, computer networking and have a strong background in controller based wireless technology.
Though now owned by ShoreTel the router will work with CISCO, Avaya and basically any PBX that supports SIP trunks and extensions. When we find a moment, we will compare the RAC and SMR functionality with a BRIA SIP soft phone, both on an iPhone.
ShoreTel Recently announced the availability of Version 7 of the Enterprise Contact Center. It is not secret that I am a big fan of this product, so I was anxious to see what the new version had to offer. The product has a number of new features and capabilities that are both feature specific and impact the infrastructure of the product. Anyone who has worked with the ShoreTel iPBX for any period of time will become instantly comfortable with the new ECC system administration interface. It is now a browser based portal, very similar to the interface used for the iPBX administration. In fact I would be willing to bet that the new ECC portal will become the standard for the ShoreTel product line and the iPBX Shoreware Director will take on some of the characteristics of the new ECC 7 administration portal.
Another area in which the ECC has adopted the exiting iPBX paradigm is in the area of licensing. Early versions of the ECC required the installation of a hardware dongle on the server and each desktop that ran the Supervisor software. Dongles are a pain for everyone and beginning with Version 6, ShoreTel began to migrate away from this requirement by eliminating the dongle requirement for Supervisors. Previous versions of ECC required the installation of the USB Hasp on the server before installing the ECC application. No dongle, not ECC! With ECC 7, not only are the dongles not needed, you get the familiar 45 day grace period to run the ECC application and try all the features before you have to provide the license keys. The server key locks to the MAC of the server, in a fashion similar to the iPBX key. The ECC application also reads the BIOS serial number of the server for added software protection.
Other infrastructure changes include the support for Windows 2008 R2 64 Bit Servers. The ECC will support Citrix and WTS clusters and most importantly, roaming profiles are now supported. The system will now allow for 100 concurrent Supervisors and 1000 concurrent Agents, though you may define 2000 agents in the database configuration. The application support 400 DNIS reports and historical data can now be kept for 24 months allowing for year over year trend analysis.
An exciting new feature is the addition of Personal Queues. I am sure we have all had the experience of working with an “agent” on a particular customer service issue, maybe given a “home work “ assignment only to call back and have to start over with a new agent. The concept of a “Personal Queue” makes it possible for inbound callers to reach specific agents, if you desire that option. In this way, after completing the “home work” assignment, you can call back in and queue for the agent that originally handled your call in the first place. Agents can move high priority calls to their personal queue with a simple mouse click. Historically, if you wanted this option you had to configure a group and service for each agent that required a personal queue. With Version 7, this process has been streamlined with the creation go a new entity that defines how the caller should be handled while in the personal queue. A very powerful option and very useful in direct selling environments.
The familiar graphical scripting tools has not changed and scripts are generated using the established procedure. The Diagnostic console has been upgraded and is more usable for trouble shooting at the System Administrator level. I am particularly excited about the creation of a Lab SKU, something I would like to see ShoreTel do with the entire product line. The Lab SKU makes it possible for you to purchase and run a small scale Contact Center along side your production environment. In this way you can create new scripts, strategies, call flows and of course, test new upgrades before putting them into your production environment!
Version 12 of ShoreTel is all about Web Collaboration and enhanced Unified Communications functionality! For Example, ShoreTel has had an IM capability since Version 8, but historically you required a Microsoft OCS server to enjoy this feature. Not that Microsoft OCS is a bad solution, but it is really over kill for a functionality as simple as Internet Messaging! The ShoreTel Professional Communicator enabled the IM function as an integrated, single desktop client and many users wanted that functionality without having to grow the expense of a Microsoft OCS server. Enter the concept of a new ShoreTel Collaboration Server with all the bells and whistles disguised as an “appliance”! The New ShoreTel Collaboration Server, available with Version 12, provides a rich set of features that include Audio Conferencing, Internet Messaging, Desktop Sharing, Web Collaboration and Microsoft Outlook integration.
Not only is the functionality of this product astonishing and easy for users to manage, but the ease with which it installs is near magical. As an “appliance” the ShoreTel conference server installs as simply as installing any ShoreGear Switch! Open Version 12 of Shoreware Director, it looks very familiar and is just as you would expect it to be from your earlier version experiences. You have to look very carefully to see the subtle but very powerful change that has been made. Prior to Version 12, you would find an administration navigation link to Switches and you would use this link to configure and deploy ShoreGear switches. This familiar link is gone and you will now find a new link entitled “Platform Hardware”. Selecting this link enables you to “add a new switch” and the usual list of ShoreGear switches appears in the drop down menu! Look a bit closer at the drop down list and you will see a new device or appliance: the ShoreTel Collaboration Server! The server installs, is managed, configured and upgraded like any Shoregear Switch.
Ever wonder how business was conducted before email and cell phones? Desktop sharing, IM and web collaboration are rapidly becoming the minimum daily adult requirement for Unified Communications and is now a “must have” for business development in the Internet age. There is a steady stream of dollars migrating out of the Transportation segment and into Communication segment of your P&L as businesses look to cut cost, increase productivity and shorten sales cycles. Having these tools is no longer an option! I suspect that the best and the brightest young talent coming into the work force will not only expect these tools, but will evaluate the potential for a company’s success based on the availability of these capabilities. The ShoreTel Collaboration server It is a fully featured solution for anyone that is looking for a cost effective alternative to GoToMeeting and other WebEx like products. Check it out the DrVoIP “tech tip” video clip for a sneak peak at all of this!
We have been steadily moving through a range of mobility options on our way to achieving true fixed mobile convergence. We want to take our Office Extension away on our Cell phones and have the same functionality away from the office as we do in the office! Originally, people forwarded their office extensions to their Cell phones. Not the best solution, but clearly the easiest to set up. The problem however, is that the caller to your office extension might end up anywhere including your cell phone voice mail. So much for a maintaining a business presence!
ShoreTel addressed that issue, but adding a couple of useful features. For example, you can use External Assignment. Someone calls your desk phone and you can have it re-assigned to your home phone or cell phone. The benefit over call forwarding alone, is that the call profiles you set up for each of your call handling modes are followed as if the caller were going to your desk phone.
Find Me Follow Me with the auto option was also very useful for that reason. When your desk phone was called, it could be routed to your cell phone. You had to explicitly accept the call or the system would take the call back and put it in your personal Voice Mail box. This is clearly superior to just forwarding the call off to your cell phone, risking the possibility of having the caller end up in a personal cell phone voice mailbox.
Twining (see other blog video) is also a favorite strategy for extending your office phone to your cell. Why not ring both devices when your desk phone is called? In this way you could answer on either device and you could also seamlessly move the call between the devices. For example if I am on my desk phone and need to jump into my car and race off to the next appointment, but do not want to terminate my current call, I can simply hit the move button and the call now appears on my cell. Likewise, if I took the call on my cell phone, I can now *23 and send it to my desk phone enabling me to move seamlessly from my car to my desk.
The Mobile Call Manager is another exciting option for extending your desk phone to your cell. Using the ShoreTel Mobile Call Manager, we get a GUI on our phone that allows us to setup our call handling, review voice messages and otherwise experience most of what we see in the desktop Communicator. I can externally assign my desk phone to my Mobile Call Manager and setup phone calls that originate at the office.
All of these are useful tools, but none come close to true fixed mobile convergence. I want my cell phone to be smart enough to enable me to take and make office phone calls regardless of where I am on the planet. I also want the phone to work on any available WiFi connection and to seamlessly move between G3 and WiFi without dumping the call in progress. You walk into Starbucks and your cell phone is smart enough to jump on the WiFi and establish a secure connection back to the office and register with the office mobility server. Any call coming into your office desk phone will now ring your cell phone as a SIP extension!
With a true mobility router, a call to my desk phone will ring both my office extension and my mobile extension. I can answer the call on either extension and have full feature access. While out on the WiFi I can still access my office directory, history, voice mail and manipulate active calls to allow conference and transfer functionality. If my WiFi drops my G3 connection can pick up and continue as my office SIP extension.
Calls to my Cell phone are personal business and calls to my office desk are for business. I want each of these callers to receive appropriate call handling. If I make a call to a personal contact, I want my CID to be different then my CID to a business contact. The phone should be smart enough to route business calls to the company VM and personal calls to my personal VM. All of this is possible with a true Mobility router. All that is required is a PBX that supports both SIP trunks and SIP extensions. Most if not all of the IP based PBX solutions in the market support this capability and the ShoreTel Mobility Router and ShoreTel Roam Anywhere Client make true fixed mobile convergence a reality!
We have not had an update to our System Administration video series since Version 8. System Administration had not significantly changed over the various new releases, so we did not feel the need to do an update. Our Version 8 stuff is still relevant and useful no matter what Version of ShoreTel you are on. We actually installed our first ShoreTel system on Version 3 Build 3.1.11100 back in the day when Shoreline only had Analog phones! You might be interested to know that first system is still installed and we have continued to upgrade it over the last nine years! We had to make a hardware change for the first time recently, but come on! 9 years on the same system! That is amazing. Talk about ROI! We have watched with old blue Shoreline become the new Orange ShoreTel while steadily improving the functionality, scale, and architecture over the years! Somewhere around Version 4, we grew IP phones, but System Administration was relatively the same. When we moved from the old Microsoft Access Database in Version 7 to the MySQL database in Version 8, System administration was still basically the same, but we finally cranked out a tutorial revision. Now, as the solution matures development that was taking shape in Version 10 and 11, we figure it is about time to do a new System Administration Series, so we are starting to crank out Version 12!
A note to DrVoIP fans and critics: occasionally I log in here and see comments that you have left. Unfortunately, I turned auto comments off because it just became another place for Viagra advertisements and other Spam. I do enjoy the interaction with those of you who find the blog useful, however, so please keep the comments coming. Just Don’t try to post them here as the spam filter now kills all blog comments. Please just send them on to Peter@DrVoIP.com! Thank you all for your support and encouragement!
We have previously posted a blog on the creation of ShoreTel WAV files using the Call Manager the desired result. This is clearly a readily available tool and can reliably be used for small Automated Attendant greetings and to meet other WAV file requirements. Generally in our standard deployments, we use an outside professional voice production studio to give our clients that extra level of attention that defines a quality Automated Attendant Greeting. It seems however, that no matter how many times we specify the WAV file format we expect returned, there is an issue. This requires us to reformat each WAV file and that all takes time. Given that the clients usually wait until the absolute last minute to provide the script for their Automated Attendants, this extra step takes time the project really cant spare!
We have also noted that, even when we are assured that we have a WAV file formatted with the correct parameters, we have audio playback issues. Our outside studio uses Mac based applications and they swear they output to the correct format, but we still have playback issues! In an ECC deployment you might have 100 different recordings that define your call flow, agent busy messages and Interactive Voice Response applications. What is the best practice in converting these files to the proper ShoreTel WAV format? Regardless of how the WAV was produced or how certain we are that it is in the correct format, we reformat the files anyway. Loading a WAV file, only to find that it is defective when you are testing your Call Flow is a waste of time.
Using some SOX a Linux utility ported for Windows, we were able to create utility to convert WAV files in bulk. You can download SOX from the following site, or send us an email and I will forward you a link to download a ZIP file containing a complete batch utility. The zip file will create a new folder with three files inside including the SOX application and the Batch instructions. Running this application is very easy. Just drag your WAV files to the file named batch-convert-shoretel. This will cause the Batch utility to initialize and run. The output of the newly formatted files will be located in a new folder aptly named ShoreTel-Ready. Send me an email and I will send you a link to the Utility.
The file is available as a Free Digitial Download, open a free membership at DrVoIP.com and go for it!
