Just-in - Mark Your Calendar for 11/9 Webinar

Stop Thinking About IVR as Voice Only!  

The New Contact Center Experience  

Hear how Gold Achieves 50%+ Lower TCO with Gold Systems IVR & Voice Solutions and much more.  Click here to register.

Gold Systems, a leader in self-service customer communications using Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions announced that they have achieved the Microsoft Unified Communications Gold Competency.  "We have certified Microsoft Certified Professionals (MCP's) who have passed new UC competency evaluations. In addition, our sales experts have passed the sales and marketing assessment to achieve this goal as well as the required number of customer recommendations," noted Terry Gold CEO. "We have a strong professional services group that is skilled in both the migration from traditional PBX systems as well as the implementation of new Lync greenfield installations," Gold added. Gold systems has also partnered with other unified communications industry leaders to provide - start-to-finish, side-by-side and over-the-shoulder professional services.  Gold has indepth knowledge of media gateways, session border controllers, end points, SIP trunking and other options to maximize the range of customer settings from SMB to large-enterprise. For more information on Gold Professional Services, please email websales@goldsys.com.

Top-10 UC Planning - "Best Practices"

6 - Add multi-level UPS power systems for systems, HVAC, staff, and network management including fire suppression.

Real world answer: With minor exceptions, all our sites have back up generators.  Most have on site fuel storage, although a few rely on utility natural gas feeds.  All sites have a minimum of 4 hours of battery back up, the majority have 8 hours.  HVAC systems are only redundant at our main site.   Most other sites have a single system.  A few sites have no A/C, but with our costal climate, this isn't a big issue most of the year.  Where possible our HVAC systems are on the generator.  Staff areas, network management and fire suppression systems are all on generators, but not on redundant systems.

7 - Plan for multiple geographic route terminations for voice traffic.

Real world answer: This is in the plans.   Right now all our trunking is either PRI, or back up analog trunks.  All of these utilize the local carrier (AT&T) and the local CO.  Our local CO only got a redundant network link last year, up until then we were at the end of the line.  As we move to SIP trunking, we will be able to utilize the multiple campus entrances for IP traffic as well as keeping a few PRI's through the carrier.

8 - Apply corporate risk and IT security practices including before and after disaster policy reviews.

Real world answer: Yep, and it has worked well.  Downside is that with the exception of us in telecom, and a few of the network guys, none of them have any telecom background.  They often try to apply server/website logic, attitudes and understanding to the telephone network.  It actually can be pretty comical sometimes, but they are trying.

9 - Train redundant staff and contract for backup "hot site."

Real world answer: That would be nice, probably won't ever happen.  There is some rumblings about the University of California Office of the President operating a large IP voice platform, but not sure if that will ever come to fruition.  

10 - Conduct monthly "stress tests."

Real world answer: Every month when I get my paycheck.

This is by all means not all the potential tips and real-world answers but they have been validated by a number of seasoned UC experts.  We do invite your comments or solutions anytime. 

One Last Look Published Last Week Top-10 UC Planning - "Best Practices"

We begin a two part series "best practices" - guidelines and real world answers.  As you may know, I don't really like the term UC or unified communications.  I prefer SC or simplified communications as both the user and the administrator want features for users and systems for administrators that are simpler more integrated to manage.  However, not always wanting to fight the trends, there is a considerable amount of research into this presentation along with at least one real-life administrator's comments.  This presentation will be expanded to include others being written and if you have your own answers, we would be delighted to include them here.  The animated version can be found by clicking here.  Here is the text version: 

Guideline: 1 - Locate IP-PBXs physically close to your IP gateways.

Real world answer: Good point.  That we did.  In all but one location, we are co-located with core network routers (Cisco 65XX)  We are directly connected from the PBX to the port on the router.  No patch panel in between for less chances of someone accidentally unplugging the wrong patch cord.  Our sites were set up like this before the upgrade, so it wasn't a big step, but it did allow us to pool resources.  We supplied -48vdc power to the routers rather than the network guys trying to manage their own UPS systems, (which they had a very poor track record of).   We also were able to air condition only one space, rather than two.  In addition, our PBX has a couple of alarm inputs that we normally use for monitoring our external rectifiers.  By having these alarm indications, we can tell them that the power is out at a specific location.  In the past, all they would know was that a site had dropped off the network with no information as to the cause.

Guideline: 2 - Locate IP gateways and Unified Messaging servers on the same VLAN (with 802.1p and q)  and the same physical site.

Real world answer: Did that too.  The processors in each cabinet are all on the same subnet.  The gateway cards are on their own subnet.  This allowed for easy security control and monitoring of traffic.  As we start deploying IP phones, we'll be visiting the VLAN issue too.  Our AVST voice mail system is co-located with our main site, and on the same network, DC power, etc.    

Guideline: 3 - Locate Unified Messaging servers within the same physical site as  

other servers that have Exchange 2007 server roles installed, including Mailbox, Hub Transport, and Client Access servers.   

Real world answer: We don't use Exchange, but we are across the hall from our main data center.

Guideline: 4 - Terminate your WAN network connections physically close to where all SIP/IP equipment is located with both diverse (separate trench/aerial) and redundant physical routes.

Real world answer: All in the same room as our main site.  The network guys really jumped on board with the DC power stuff.  They had a very poor record of maintaining UPS's and had no UPS systems capable of running their equipment for more than a few minutes.  By placing their core routers, WAN connections, ISP connections at our main site, and utilizing a second site for back up ISP connections.  All ISP connections, core routers and WAN connections, as well as some microwave links are on our DC power system.  We sized for either 4 or 8 hours of run time based on the availability of on site fuel storage for the generators.  All sites with the exception on 2 very small locations, have back up generators.  With the generators and our long term DC power capabilities, it's rare that power outages affect our systems.  We do get occasional generator failures.

All core routers are dual homed.  ISP connections are redundant using alternate paths.  Remote sites (off the main campus) usually have at least two diverse paths back to the main campus.

Guideline: 5 - In branch office scenarios or over WAN connections, create VLAN set routers to prioritize voice and use the G.729 codec where feasible instead of the G.711 codec to minimize voice network traffic.

Real world answer: Got that too.  Some of our network guys are still a bit sore that our traffic is "prioritized" on "their" network, but they are slowly getting over it.   We are using G.711 on all our inter-site links, but will likely use the G.729 for everything else.  We are currently only running traffic between sites over the data network.  Actual roll out of IP telephones will begin next year.  VLAN for that is in the works.

Record It or Record the Fact That You Lost Your Job  

Live-Pa will be at Broadsoft Connexions email james.howard@live-pa.com to meetup  

What

Live-PA (http://www.live-pa.com) facilitates both recording of audio streams from Microsoft Lync and OCS 2007 R2 to managed storage, and access to a SharePoint portal for playback of call recordings.  As a fully Microsoft Lync integrated product it represents the best of breed solution to any call recording and regulatory compliance needs and is available in both on-premise and hosted service versions. 

Recording customer calls can help your business train all staff, increase efficiency and improve your customer service. In a competitive age where customers expect an instant and accurate response, more and more businesses are looking for new ways to enhance their customer service and increase efficiency and one of the ways that's available to any industry and uses technology every business already has, is through call recording.

With call recording businesses can record all (or some) of their incoming and outbound calls and those call recordings can then be played back to help businesses improve the customer relationship, increase accuracy and to train staff.

Also "From March 2009, firms will have to record all telephone conversations and electronic communications relating to client orders and the conclusion of transactions in the equity, bond, and derivatives markets." And, this "Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object... shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both."

 

Unlike other call recording systems for Lync, Live-PA integrates directly with the Lync server components and not at the End Points. This means that Live-PA is not restricted by End Point type and ensures complete consistency of all recordings. This is done by intercepting the call and sending a copy of the audio through a series of sophisticated components.

A Live-PA component called the Redirector is installed onto the Front End Server. Another component, the Edge Node, is installed on the Edge Server. The purpose of both of these components is to send the audio streams of conversations to a 3rd Component called the Duplicator instead of their original destination. The decision to redirect a call is based upon data received from the Live-PA portal as to the recording status of the participants.

The Duplicator then, as its name implies, creates a duplicate audio stream and send the original stream onto is original destination. The speed of this operation

means that the receiving End Point is unaware that the audio has been re-routed.

The duplicated stream is sent to the Decryptor which, again as the name implies, decrypts the audio streams and joins together the multiple streams of a conversation as single file for the Transcoder to encrypt and store along with associated Metadata in the Live-PA Portal. Other components provide functionality to interact with the system during a call to allow for On-Demand users to initiate a recording or add Tags, Bookmarks or Actions which are then stored against the recording.   

It is time to take another step in getting your Lync implementation to be ready for what comes as regulatory, compliance and professional industry standards are increasingly requiring tracking of all business activities.  

One Last Look - Part 3 of 4 UCMA in the post-PBX world - View by Terry Gold - CEO Gold Systems    

 I was visiting customers this week and heard another acronym that is getting tossed around a lot in our world.  CEBP, or Communications Enabled Business Process.  Although I think it is a terrible acronym, the idea behind it is why I'm so excited about Lync.  I'll give you my first recollection of an example of Communications Enabling a Business Process from my early days at Gold Systems. 

 

Our very first customer twenty years ago, was Metropolitan Federal Bank in Fargo, North Dakota.  We built their very first automated telephone banking system, and while the people we worked with were very nice, the CEO was very concerned about putting an automated system in front of his customers.  This bank's roots went back to 1926 and he did not want some computerized voice annoying his customers, but the reality was that he could not staff a call center 24/7, 365 days a year, and his newer customers were demanding access to their accounts at all times.  We built a system that was easy to use, and it got great acceptance.  The customers who wanted to speak to a person could press zero during business hours, and the rest were able to do their banking day or night.

We did have a problem though.  The system used an SNA Link to the bank's mainframe, and it pretended to be a human at a "green screen" to get account information and then speak it back to the caller.  Sometimes the mainframe would go down, or the link would fail, or the bank programmers would change the location of a field and break our application.  When that happened, our application spoke the dreaded phrase, "We're sorry, the system is not available, please call back later."

 

Unfortunately for us, the CEO's brother-in-law was a big user of the system, and he seemed to be the guy who always caught the system misbehaving.  And he would call the CEO, who would call his IT director, who would call me.  Something had to be done because even though the system had great uptime, the "monitoring by brother-in-law" was not working.  So, we got the idea to build software that would get executed whenever the system had a problem, and it would literally call us on the phone, or send email to our support group.  We took a business process (I want my bank balance) and we communications-enabled it. We went on to communications-enable lots of business processes for customers, so when I first heard the acronym, CEBP I thought, "so that's what we've been doing all this time!"

 

Today, we no longer should think of the silos of "the phone system" or "email," we should be thinking about communications, and all forms of communications should work together.  With Microsoft Lync I can go from an email, to an IM, to voice, to video, to a conference, and I can do it with exactly one click per transition.  That's Unified Communications.  Using that capability from within a business application, such as an order processing work flow application or an accounting application is CEBP.  

 

One of the customers I talked to this week called it "Transforming Business through Communications." That's exactly what it is!  Click here for Gold Systems website. 

Migrating to Microsoft Lync?  

See AudioCodes in booth #50 at Broadsoft Connexions for their cool mobile VoIP solution, click here for show info. 

AudioCodes Survivable Branch Appliances (SBA) and Media Gateways for Microsoft Lync - the preferred integration solution for branch office survivability (SBA), connectivity and interoperability with SIP Trunks, PBXs, IP-PBXs and other legacy systems.  

  
AudioCodes:  Interoperability, reliability and investment protection from the experts.   

Click here for more information.  Click on image for 8 steps to UC Flash tutorial.

Marketing Communications Solutions

There are a number of other marcom solutions available such as:  

- Newsletters (e.g. private label version of Lync User Forum)  

      from Constant Contact Certified Experts click here 

- Webseminars ("Highest Scores Ever" - Microsoft)

- Customer Case Studies ("Best Customer Case Study' - Broadsoft)

- White Papers (Top-10 Tips for VoIP Implementation - XO)

- SEO (top placement of key words in Google), e.g. Google  IVR Lync

- Social marketing (Twitter, social media course) see my Twitter account @techtionary

- Social media training (course evaluations available)

- Articles - email for example

- Press Releases (email for examples)

- Training - your courses

- Course development new courses (Qwest, Microsoft, others)

- Elearning course development and delivery (Qwest)

- Videos

- Consulting (product, strategic planning, crossnetpoints model)

 Email today to get help cross@gocross.com

Get Lync Smart: TECHnet click on image for link           

Here's a great place to get Lync Smart. I particularly like the labs and podcasts (which you can download and take with you).  

Webcasts 

Tune in as Microsoft subject-matter experts present product overviews and strategies for improving productivity and driving down costs. Webcasts include technical presentations about configuring, securing, and extending your unified communications infrastructure.

Videos 

Learn smart strategies, get new insights, and stay up-to-date on Microsoft tools, technologies, and services. Stream or download a video today.  

Virtual Labs 

Test drive Microsoft's unified communications solutions in a virtual lab. It's simple-no complex setup or installation is required. You get a downloadable manual and a 90-minute block of time for each module, and you can sign up for additional 90-minute blocks anytime.

Podcasts 

Stream or download these audio podcasts on to your favorite podcast software or mobile device. These podcasts are free and do not require registration-just click, listen, and learn.

Here's from one of the labs I explore: The New Enterprise Voice Features of Microsoft Lync Server 2010.   Microsoft Lync Server 2010 introduces the ability to give users a second, private telephone line in addition to the primary telephone line. Private telephone lines are often assigned to executives and others who want an unlisted telephone number at which they can be reached directly.  Private telephone lines can only be configured with the Lync Server Management Shell.   

Lync Forum Jobs Board

 click here to see. 

Jobs added for free on Lync Forum website

Jobs added in Newsletter for a fee.

Email links to your jobs to cross@gocross.com

Click here for blog 

Listen to customers:

email:nexthop@microsoft.com

tweet:http://www.twitter.com/DrRez

- Educate and inform through the NextHop, DrRez, PowerShell, and Lync client blogs found at:

http://nexthop.info

- stimulate a dialogue:

Twitter  

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