Replacing old phone system
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@NetworkNerd Agreed. Ok, so they still work on RJ-11s and not RJ-45s. Got it. I wasn't sure. Thanks for the explanation. So the NEC phone systems you see in retail, etc. Those are digital?
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@ajstringham
I would say you cannot assume it as a general rule, but is possible: http://advancedtel.com/products/nec-ipdigital-phone-systems. Older NEC systems may be digital. We have one at a location for which I manage the phones and PBX...soon to be replaced with Elastix.And it could be digital phones connected to a back end VOIP system like the one you see here. The phone system itself can be VOIP / digital / analog. The phones themselves could fall into one of those categories as well when we speak in general.
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We are using ACD to move calls around to different hunt groups as the ACD dictates. Beyond that, we have Voicemail, about 30 DIDs and a 2 operator console. The operators have a software console that show them all of the phones in the system (these two buildings) and their status. They can also use the console to send calls to those users, change the users status, etc.
We don't have a specific conference ability beyond putting one call on hold and then calling another person on a different line (though a call in type conference bridge might be nice). The ability to give console access to more people would be nice as well (inter-tel wants something like $2500-$5k for each desk).
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@ajstringham said:
How did management react to hearing a number like 25K?
They said, why are you even talking to me since we have a $6K solution from the current vendor? and no problems that we are trying to overcome.
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@ajstringham said:
@dashrender That is certainly doable. I'm just thinking for failover, etc. We have people who have phones that can't go down. Ever. Others have a one-hour tolerance, two, four, etc. Higher need for little to no downtime will increase cost and complexity to varying degrees. $150/phone seems to be a bit high but it depends on what they're selling. Digium did NOT invent Elastix. It's an open-source product.
I can't tell you because they don't know. If I ask them they will of course say - we can't afford any downtime, but we know that's simply not true. It would be better to present options like
To be reasonably sure we suffer only 5 mins of downtime will cost $20k
To be reasonably sure we suffer only 1 hour of downtime will cost $12k
To be reasonably sure we suffer only 4 hour of downtime will cost $6k
etcThen they can decide what level of risk they want.
As I said, they've already decided from a critical situation (think the surgical center) that they can use personal cell phones in case of an emergency. When it comes to patient's ability to call us, or us call them in non emergent situations, personally I think we could afford 4 hours without to much image damage. All calls could be routed to the answering service within 10 mins of the outage starting so the calls would not be simply ringing with no answer. -
@Dashrender Let me ask you this:
Assuming you got all new phones, how many would you need?
Basic phone (make/take calls, transfer, hold, conference in):
Conference room phone:
Secretary phones:
Anything else:
TOTAL =What is your internal infrastructure like? Things like a hot/cold model could work if you don't need 99.9999% uptime with a VM locally and a failover in the colo or even a second local instance. Or an on-premise and cloud failover solution works too. Either way.
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Let me say first that our current phone system has not backup DR solution - other than call the vendor. If the Inter-Tel 5000 dies, I grab my cell phone and call the vendor. They grab a 5000 off the shelve - a hopefully current version of our call processing and drive to my site and install the new unit. This costs us nothing until we use this option.
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@ajstringham Let me get back to you with the count.
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@dashrender I'm thinking for a VoIP system if you are replacing the backbone of th esystem, replace the phones. No point preserving ancient technology. Like trying to preserve XP. Waste of time and money. Just getting ideas.
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@ajstringham The presented solution is as follows:
Replace the Digital switch with an Inter-Tel 5000 (VOIP) switch.
Connect a VOIP to digital gateway appliance that all of the current digital phones will plug into and work as normal.
Done.We had a meeting with the vendor yesterday and the suggested that as digital phones die, we replace them with VOIP phones. I had to remind management that that would mean they would possibly need new wiring, and even if no new wiring, they would new POE/power injectors/power bricks for each VOIP phone put in. Frankly I was surprised I was told that was doable.
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@Dashrender Do you not have the drops necessary for another cable? As far as PoE, why? I'm assuming you're using desktops at most workstations. Just passthrough the phone to the computer so you have one line back to the switch/patch panel and you don't need extra drops. Replacing the system and not the phones would be a foolish move IMO.
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@ajstringham
This building was cabled long before I came along. Each station only has one ethernet drop. Plus about 1/3 of the drops are in places without a computer, so there is no pre existing cable to use.
What do you mean why PoE? Because I hate using power bricks, and am not fond of the idea of using power injectors (though I can't tell you why - it's just a personal thing, I suppose I could get over it).Let's assume that building has 65 phones and you said that $150 was a bit high so will lowball it at $100 each - that's still $6500 in phones before I look at adding cabling and PoE switches.
But... now in writing that previous sentence... if I replaced all the phones, they can all connect to my current Inter-Tel 5000 so I could dump that expense and be over only the cost of cabling and the PoE switches. ... wait that thought won't work because phones for my current phone system cost $250+ ea ($125 for the phone and $125 for their IP license). So that ups my price on phones alone to $16,250.
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@dashrender I don't think you understand. If you have a computer at a location, it has a line. Plug that line into the VoIP phone. The phone as a port that goes from the phone to the computer. One "backbone" line you could say for two devices. No need for PoE or injectors because phones are powered via AC plugs. As far as licensing, yea, spend the money on new phones. Elastix has no licensing limitations or extensions cap, etc. What's the issue here? All you need is the extra 3 ft Cat 5e/6 cables.
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@ajstringham I do understand that I only need one ethernet port at each desk to run both a phone and the computer (I'm doing that now in the second building that has VOIP phones already.
I want PoE because I don't want to use "phones are powered via AC plugs" as you put it - I said power bricks in my previous posts. More plugs under the desk just invite more problems (and add to the cost because most phones don't come with them) Since I have to have the cost anyway power brick or PoE switch, I'll take the switch if available.
Most phones come with a Cat5e cable so I wouldn't need anything there.
I did understand that Elastix does not have a licensing cost, it's just the phone cost itself.
Earlier when I mentioned that Asterisk was made by Digium ( I didn't say Elastix was made by Digium - should have said Mark Spencer of Digium) is that wrong? And a search I just did showed that Elastix is based on Asterisk and several other projects.
Let's pause on this conversation until I get a full phone count.
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@Dashrender Ok, sorry about that. Misread a couple things.
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At the time of the original post, Elastix was still an awesome project. Since that time it has really gone down hill. I would skip Elastix and look at FreePBX today.
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yeah we want to know how our friend @Dashrender ended up in his voip setup project ??
i'm curious to know
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I was all set to make the conversion from our Mitel system to a FreePBX system in July 2015. Unfortunately many of the features which only exist in their precise form on Mitel. When other department leads were brought into the conversation, they immediately indicated their complete disapproval of the loss of those features.
Unfortunately I can't recall the exact line item I couldn't achieve that lead to me immediate reverse course on the deployment of FreePBX, but the decision to change gears and go with a Mitel solution was made and acted upon.
Features that were different:
Console - FOP2 was a significant step backwards compared to the Mitel console. FOP2 was difficult if not impossible for the operator to create their own groups that quickly allowed them to see status of given phones. Also calling someone from the console was a challenge, while not insurmountable, it was just one more strike against it.DND - a SIP based solution works completely different than a proprietary system. SIP phones traditionally just provide a busy back to the PBX, This gives the PBX itself no information about the real state the end user desires. I.E The default DND can't tell the main system (and by extension other users on the system) that a user is at lunch, in a meeting, etc. Only through the use of dialing codes was this possible. This could be made a bit easier for the end user if the phone had many buttons that could be programmed to enter the codes automatically, but often times the display wasn't forthcoming on the status of DND on the endpoint. This could lead the end user to easily not realizing their phone was on DND.
Call parking: This would have been a complete process change from how Mitel works. Mitel provided an option to transfer a call to a given extension and place that call on hold on that extension with no action required by the person sitting at the extension in question. From a customer service perspective I consider a bonus. Example: A caller calls in, the Operator answers the call, places the call on hold, then calls around to locate someone to take the call. Once that person is located, the operator returns to the caller and transfers the call on hold to the found assistant. If the hold option wasn't available, the assistant would often have to take the call, then tell the caller they will be putting them back on hold while they (the assistant) finishes the task in front of them). The hold ability allows one fewer interaction, and the probable better 'feeling' of the caller, i.e. they feel less like they don't matter because, hold please, hold please, hold please, etc.
Switching to the calling parking situation that is available in FreePBX required the Operator to first send the call to the parking lot, noting the lot number.. then finding a person to give the call to and giving the lot number to the assistant. The assistant then has to remember that number while finishing their current task before retrieving the call. All the while hoping someone else doesn't grab the wrong parking lot number and moving the call inadvertently.
Of course neither of these situations are my (or others) ultimate desire. Instead we'd rather just see a ACD that these callers could be dumped into, and the available assistants would get calls from the ACD as they were free to work on them. Sadly the assistants have made this a more or less unworkable solution up to this point, but changes are being made in management, we might get this change soon (as in Jan/Feb 2016).
These were the larger challenges I faced. If I can recall the item that ultimate pushed be away from this, I'll come back and update the thread.
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Things of note:
I know that Scott really trusts getting your phone calls over SIP via normal internet lines, and he has provided countless stories of telephony companies that have PRIs down for months at a time.
The volatile nature of the internet leads me to concerns of throughput and voice quality.
When providing options to management I offered both traditional SIP trunks through one of the many providers mentioned on ML as well as a much less flexible but separated solution provided by Cox. Cox offered a dedicated line and a SIP gateway device. I suggested that we could back this service up by having a secondary SIP provider that we could transfer the calls to in case the lines between us and Cox went down.This solution was the one chosen.
Phone:
Yealink phones are definitely inexpensive. There are a great starter phone, but compared to the Mitel phones I had before, they felt cheap. The handsets have a low arch that make them difficult to hold the phone to your ear with your shoulder. If this is something you do regularly, you better expect to either deploy headsets or the foam addons for the handset.Also, determine the button layout you'll need before you decide on the phones themselves, you may find that you need/want more buttons than the less expensive phones will allow.
