Recently in Voip Solutions Category

 Every call center has peaks and valleys.  Normal businesses operate with very predictable calling patterns.  Traffic over the normal business day, starts out slow and peaks between 10AM  and 2 PM in the afternoon, then trickles down.  The old Bell Curve distribution pattern!   Call centers on the other hand, have very different call characteristics depending on the nature of the business.  One characteristic that we can be confident in, is the fact that there are more callers than "agents" to service the calls.  Thus the need for some kind of qeueing capability.

"We are sorry, but all available agents are working with other clients.  Please hold the line and the next available agent will be right with you.     Unfortunately,  callers might tire of the music on hold and predictable care messages, and ultimately give up and then hang up!   This is generally an "abandoned call" in most contact center environments and reports.    The ShoreTel Contact Center has a facility for capturing this information and doing something producitive with it.

Back to the concept of  "Peaks and Valleys".  What if we could take the "abandoned calls", capture the caller id and feed them to our agents during valleys in the calling periods?  After all the staff is sitting there, logged in and idle!  Lets just put them to work.   In a ShoreTel system this is very easy to setup and is a powerful productivity tool.  First, the system "reserves and agent".   The agent gets a little pop up window that informs them that they are being reserved for a call back.  They have to accept it, or they are put in "release" as if they turned down an incoming phone call (time for management tutoring).   When the agent accepts the reservation, the ShoreTel places the outbound phone call and then connects the call to the agent.   With the exception that they acknowledged the reservation request, the agent experiences the call as if it were any other in bound call to the contact center.

Optionally, you can play a file to the callED party before you send the call to the agent.  I have found however, that it is better to send the call to the agent immediately after it is dialed.  This is because the agent is better able to deal with "positive answer supervision" using the human ear, then the machine is able to tell the difference between a fax machine, answering machine or someother non-human answer.

Making use of the abandoned call feature is something that every Contact Center can do to increase agent productivity and customer satisfaction.   You can even setup a group that specializes in abandonded call backs, and route all calls to that "win back" group.    The following video describes how to set this up in your ShoreTel Contact Center (or you can just call us, and we can do it for you)!  

We have been actively working with VoIP since 1999!   Since 2001 we have installed well over 10,000 ShoreTel desktops and one characteristic of these VoIP environments has surfaced into high relief on the radar screen here in technical support:  A VoIP solution is only as good as the computer Network it runs on!    Network Monitoring - a Necessary Evil?  When someone mentions network monitoring, most network administrators immediately start thinking: overpriced, large server requirements, difficult to install, time-consuming to configure.  If those hurdles are overcome, then there's a potential rainbow at the end of the road: Immediate notification of problems, faster problem resolution, less downtime of services.  That equates to happier & more productive users, and a more profitable organization. What's interesting to realize is that the vast majority of companies all want to know the same things with their network:

• When do problems happen?
• Where are the problems?
• Why do these problems exist?

We have decided to create a product that eliminates all of the hurdles and answer these same questions no matter how large or complex a network was deployed.

 We can now:

• Deploy and auto-discovers your entire network in just a few minutes
• Continuously monitors the health of every device and interface on your network

 This allows for some proactive analysis that includes:

• Quickly learn which interfaces in your entire network are discarding packets
• Perform a call path mapping of the health of every interface used in a VoIP call
• Run a call simulation from any computer to any IP endpoint (including router interfaces)
• Know what your current Internet utilization is - live (updated every 2.5 seconds)
• Learn the switch and port where your VoIP phones are connected

Contact us today and we will send you a FREE completely operating network monitoring system for your evaluation.  Send a return email that lists:

• Company Name
• User Name
• User email address
• User phone number

And we will email you the download link and evaluation license code! Our only requirement is that you be a ShoreTel  system user.!  DrVoIP@DrVoIP.com

Prior to version 7 of  ShoreTel, backing up your ShoreTel system was very straight forward. There was a single folder in the root directory named d:\ Shoreline data. This folder contained all the information that was required to completely restore your ShoreTel system from a bare metal server in the event of a major disaster. The folder contained the configuration database, which at the time was kept in Microsoft Access. It also contained all of your recorded prompts for Automated Attendant, your voice mail messages, all of your Call Detail Records and softswitch related information. You could easily identify this one folder and make it a part of your normal system backup process for your company. With the introduction of Version 7 of ShoreTel the company began to migrate away from the Microsoft Access database and move toward the MySQL database. First they moved the Call Detail Records and with Version 8, the entire configuration database had migrated to MySQL. For this reason the database backup process for a ShoreTel system has changed. The process must now include the backup of two MySQL databases and the aforementioned Shoreline data folder. ShoreTel does provide a few BAT file examples of how you might do this, but if you want to automate the process complete with a schedule you will want to consider using some other tools. We recommend the use of SQLyog and include a copy on every server that we support or install (just another reason to have DrVoIP do your ShoreTel maintenance). Send an email request to drvoip@drvoip.com and we will send you a tech note that details this process or you can watch this silent video .

Encryption of VoIP traffic was, for some of us a humorous concept. I remembered as a young development professional how much fun it was to use a packet sniffer to capture the bosses packets and reassemble his email over the LAN.  Years before that when I worked at the phone company as a central office test engineer, it was not uncommon to find an interesting phone call and plug it into the over head paging system to provide entertainment for the late night test  crew. There are times  I still think the concept of encryption on VoIP is humorous, but it is becoming less funny all the time as we move toward end to end VoIP with no TDM at all in a world populated by terrorists and other evil doers.  In any VoIP environment today, you can at some point use the usual tapping tools to capture a phone call as it hits the  TDM gateway and is converted from VoIP to traditional analog or digital signals.  From an induction coil to a line mans butt set, you can still intercept a VoIP call as it crosses the TDM boundary.

Now that VoIP is being used end to end, we do need to have a mechanism for encrypting at least the media stream. Today we generally do that with SRTP and IETF standard in combination with AES. AES or the Advanced Encryption Standard was adopted by the US Government and comprises three block ciphers: AES 128, AES 192 and AES256. Each AES cipher has a 128 bit block size with key sizes of 128, 192,and 256 respectively. This standard has generally replaced the former Data Encryption Standard or DES. It is important to understand the difference between encryption and authentication. Determining that a signal is "authentic" and originated from a source we believe to be authentic, and encrypting the contents of that communication are two very different issues. Media authentication and encryption ensures that the media streams between authenticated devices (i.e. we have validated the devices and identifies at each end) are secure and that only the intended device receives and reads the data. We need to encrypt both the media (i.e. the voice) and the signaling information (i.e. the DTMF). In most VoIP systems today, SRTO or secure RTO is implemented to assure media encryption. Understand that this encryption is not passed through to the TDM network, so once the media stream leaves the VoIP environment it is subject to eavesdropping.

Clearly as we are now able to employ VoIP end to end, SRST/AES encryption has very powerful ramifications for both the good guys and the bad guys!

Voip Solutions
If you ask your average IT professional what a T span is, the usual response will be that it is a 1.5MB connection to the internet. Ask your average telecom tech what a T span is and you will be told it is 24 channels of dial tone! As a VoIP Engineer what a T span is and you should get the answer:, "what do you want it to be"? One of the great challenges of implementing a VoIP solution is the absolute requirement that the implementation team possess an interdisciplinary skill set. The solution demands expertise in a range of specialized skills including IP network, switching, routing, supplementary telephony services , server technology management and application call flow integration.  If the user group is going to fully realize the benefits of a VoIP implementation, then each of these specialized areas of technology are going to be necessary to a successful deployment. Traditional telephony vendors are comfortable with all things TDM. They like to punch things down on 66 blocks and use "butt sets" to test for "dial tone". Network professionals have their area of comfort as to Microsoft or Linux server professionals. Call Center professionals understand caller greeting, salutation, screening, call routing, message acquisition and message retrieval at the application level, but seldom understand the underlying technology.  At the end of the day, you can shop the internet and find out who can sell you a shiny new telephone thing cheaper, but finding a team that can execute the delivery of a VoIP solution is worthy of the time you would invest selecting a new CFO! You need to work with a team that can demonstrate proficiency in each of the required discipline  and accept responsibility for every aspect of the implementation. From concept to "go live",  the voip solution provider you select  must know the difference between a "dress rehearsal" and a "take". - DrVoIP your Business Voip Service Provider.