Mitel 5000 + Unified Messaging + Required Fax Server
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I have to ask - what are the components that make up Unified Messaging?
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@Dashrender said:
I have to ask - what are the components that make up Unified Messaging?
That's just a buzzword. It's not really a thing. Only gear you would not want to use uses that term. It's for gear that is sold directly to managers and not through IT. (RE: it's a Cisco thing.)
More or less it is a marketing term for low end voice, vmail, instant messaging and email mushed into one crappy solution that does none of them well.
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In 1998, Wired Magazine called Unified Messaging the top hype term of the year.
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Wikipedia: "Unified messaging is an indistinct term that can refer to the typical definition[3] of simple inclusion of incoming faxes and voice-mail in one's email inbox"
This basically means that UM is a term from a different era. It's a legacy term. And a legacy buzzword, at that.
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Mitel 5000 systems can detect fax tone on a DID and send it to email. One of our clients has this setup. We are only software development for this client. Someone else manages their phone system, so I cannot give any details on versions and software, etc.
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I have end-user experience with the Cisco Unified Communications system. From the end-user's side, when it's working, it's rather nice. I can't speak to the administration of it, sadly.
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@JaredBusch said:
Mitel 5000 systems can detect fax tone on a DID and send it to email. One of our clients has this setup. We are only software development for this client. Someone else manages their phone system, so I cannot give any details on versions and software, etc.
You have got to be F*&^@#ING kidding me!
Can you get me some details? I specifically asked my vendor about this and they said no, it does not have a fax modem in it so it can't do that.
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@JaredBusch said:
Mitel 5000 systems can detect fax tone on a DID and send it to email. One of our clients has this setup. We are only software development for this client. Someone else manages their phone system, so I cannot give any details on versions and software, etc.
That makes more sense. Mitel's IP PBX offerings seem pretty good, in general. I'm not advising them, but I'd be shocked that they would be lacking such a basic feature.
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@Dashrender said:
Can you get me some details? I specifically asked my vendor about this and they said no, it does not have a fax modem in it so it can't do that.
Mistakes....
- Asking a salesman (technically this is a spot where a salesman should have been useful, but they aren't engineers and really don't understand this stuff.)
- FAX MODEM. He said this and you took him seriously? There is no such thing as a fax modem. That's just some made up marketing term. A modem is a modem.
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Scott, not everyone dwells on the minutia that you do. I know that a modem is a modem - it was his way of expressing that the Mitel could not accept a fax directly inside itself.
JB has told me through PM, he is now not sure if the 5000 itself is handling the fax, or if the 5000 simply hears the tones and forwards the call to the correct external device that would handle faxes.
So we're still in an unknown state on this question.
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@Dashrender said:
Scott, not everyone dwells on the minutia that you do. I know that a modem is a modem - it was his way of expressing that the Mitel could not accept a fax directly inside itself.
Maybe they should
That he said fax modem should have been a tip off. Does the Mitel really have no modem capabilities at all? -
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Scott, not everyone dwells on the minutia that you do. I know that a modem is a modem - it was his way of expressing that the Mitel could not accept a fax directly inside itself.
Maybe they should
That he said fax modem should have been a tip off. Does the Mitel really have no modem capabilities at all?Actually I know that it does - that's how they manage them remotely for the most part. Of course as customers move to SIP, this particular vendor is asking for a site to site VPN to be setup so they can manage the phone system remotely.
damnit - I'm I'm getting mad again lol
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@Dashrender said:
it was his way of expressing that the Mitel could not accept a fax directly inside itself.
Remember that we work in IT, a very technical field. If someone expresses themselves inaccurately it indicates that they likely are not comfortable with the information. If he really knew how this worked, do you feel that he would have said that? It's possible that the Mitel simply lacks all faxing capabilities, but there is also good reason to believe that he was just confused.
The ability to express something is fundamental to understanding it.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Scott, not everyone dwells on the minutia that you do. I know that a modem is a modem - it was his way of expressing that the Mitel could not accept a fax directly inside itself.
Maybe they should
That he said fax modem should have been a tip off. Does the Mitel really have no modem capabilities at all?Actually I know that it does - that's how they manage them remotely for the most part. Of course as customers move to SIP, this particular vendor is asking for a site to site VPN to be setup so they can manage the phone system remotely.
damnit - I'm I'm getting mad again lol
Well, okay. It's possible that the modem is purely for remote management. I've seen that done before. Very odd that they would build in that capability only for that and not offer it for other tasks, but who knows.
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You need to get a MultiTech FaxFinder and an Analog Hunt Group license on your 5000. If you have PRI you assign a DID to each user and they get a PDF in their email from the fax being sent, install the software on their desktop and they can drag and drop PDF, MS Office docs, etc into the program and fax back out to whomever they desire by typing the number into the program. I have done probably 30 of these or more and they work great. Training the users to understand and accept new technology is the hump in deployment.
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I have ditched my PRI for SIP trunks.
I do still have analog lines for faxes though.
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@404d said:
You need to get a MultiTech FaxFinder and an Analog Hunt Group license on your 5000. If you have PRI you assign a DID to each user and they get a PDF in their email from the fax being sent, install the software on their desktop and they can drag and drop PDF, MS Office docs, etc into the program and fax back out to whomever they desire by typing the number into the program. I have done probably 30 of these or more and they work great. Training the users to understand and accept new technology is the hump in deployment.
Did you install MultiTech FaxFinder on a server to actually accept the faxes? or is the 5000 actually handling the faxes? You don't mention anything about modems.. so I just want to know the flow.
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As long as you have DIDs available to dedicate to users you can do it with SIP trunking also. Analog trunks really limit you because you need a dedicated number per email address to properly setup the call/fax routing to email function. Otherwise with analog you would have to set an alias as a destination to hit a group of employee emails or a network share for the destination and have users check the share or get annoyed with a group email every time a fax is sent and that takes also takes security out of the delivery having a group of people having access to the document versus a 1 to 1 routing with DID directly to the intended party.
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The 5000 routes the calls to the FaxFinder via analog port to a modem or modems in the FaxFinder depending on the model, or over IP from the 5000 to the FaxFinder as a SIP endpoint and the FaxFinder then receives the document and delivers it via email or to a network share. Its a pretty flexible solution.
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OK - yeah, that's a completely normal Fax Server solution - definitely not the direction I was hoping to go.
We don't have faxes for people, we only have one fax number for the whole company. All those faxes are saved to a central network share.
I don't want to expand faxing, and definitely don't want 100 DIDs so everyone could have their own "fax line"
Thanks though
