VOIP Tech Blog

Setting up QOS on your routers to support ShoreTel VoIP across a WAN connection requires that you employ some creativity in your configuration.   Think of Class Marking as a way of “coloring” packets so that the routers no how to treat the packets when there is any kind of congestion.   We want voice packets to have a priority over data packets, so we color them and tell the carrier or WAN router which color is voice.   Generally, QOS strategies employ the use of Differential Service Control Points or DSCP values.
Read more…

DrVoIP ShoreTel Configuration, VoIP Tech Tip QOS for ShoreTel VoIP Deployments, ShoreTel QOS strategy

It really doesn’t matter what VoIP system you installed they all generally have one architectural characteristic in common; the configuration database.  Depending on the system, you might find a database engine that ranges in complexity from an Access Database to a full blown SQL database.  The database will store configuration information, status information and often, call detail records that document phone system activities.   The characteristic of the database that is consistent across all architectures is the fact that there can only be one “read/write” copy of that database! Read more…

DrVoIP ShoreTel Configuration, VoIP Tech Tip, Voip Service & Solutions DVM, MAXDBQUERIES Shoretel, ShoreTel DVM

If you have been following our tech tips, you know that route points in the ShoreTel IPBX have a matching IRN in the Contact Center. If you want to route a call to a different destination based on the date and time that a call hits the Contact Center, how and where would you apply the schedule? Technicians familiar with the ease of creating schedules in the ShoreTel IPBX, might immediately apply a schedule to a route point. After all, each call to the Contact Center hits a route point first, why not apply the OnHours/OffHours call handling directly to the route point?

At the end of the day, Contact Centers are designed to provide management, detailed information to facilitate staffing, allocate resources, decrease call holding time and increase customer satisfaction. Candidly, it is all about REPORTS! My personal prejudice is that contact centers should be designed by starting with Reports! What is it that Management wants to see? If we want to know how many callers are hitting the Contact Center during Off-Hours, for example, we can not apply the schedules to the Route Points. If the Schedule applied to the Route Point deflects the caller to a Voice Mail box, that call will not appear in the total Calls presented to the Contact Center.

If you want the call to be counted, it must actually enter the Contact Center! For this reason, most Contact Center deployments are deployed with the Automated Attendant functionality being defined within the Contact Center. In this way we can accumulate accounting information on all calls that hit the Contact Center, regardless of how they are ultimately routed. The ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center has a very powerful configuration capability as it relates to defining Schedules. Schedules are defined as “types of days” and “shifts”. At first this concept is a bit difficult to digest, but once you play with it you will realize just how powerful and impact this configuration strategy can have on your overall Contact Center call flow.

The Working Times facility enables you to define a type of day and then associate shifts to that day type. The normal ShoreTel Schedule works on a binary On-Hours Off-Hours call handling model. What happens if you want to build a call flow that needs to have calls routed differently between specific hours of the day. For example, between 12AM and 8PM, we want incoming calls to be routed to the Guard Station. Between 8AM and 12 Noon we want a live answer point at the Reception Desk. Between Noon and 1PM calls need to be routed to an outside answering service; and between 1PM and 5 PM they need to be routed back to the Reception desk. Now any technician that has been working with the ShoreTel IPBX for any period of time has developed several strategies for handling this often required call flow. The strategy usually involves cascading Hunt Groups in combination with Workgroups to achieved the desired result.

The Working Times facility within the Contact Center would handle this complexity with ease. You would define a Day Type (i.e. WeekDay) and the define the various Shifts that comprise that day. In the example above, the ticking of the clock would transition through the various “shifts” resulting in a different destination based on the time of day. This is advantageous in a call center environment and significantly less demanding to administer than the cascading Hunt group strategy. Contact Center call flow is often managed on a time of day, day of week and holiday basis at a level of sophistication that goes way beyond the On-Hours Off-Hours approach to call handling. The ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center Working Times facility is a power strategy for achieving maximum call routing control.

DrVoIP Contact Center, ShoreTel Configuration, VoIP Tech Tip ShoreTel Configuration, ShoreTel Contact Center

Trouble Shooting VoIP issues in a multi-site deployment is a challenge to even the most talented network engineer. It is often difficult to determine what is a voice equipment issue and what is an issue aggravated by a network conditions. As network engineer trouble shooting an issue, having access to network monitoring tools is essential. Sometimes we have to use the basic ICMP tool sets and ping our way through a trace route, but network connectivity is only one element of QOS related areas in a VoIP deployment. (Actually, it would be great if clients invested in putting network monitoring tools in place, but they only seem to appreciate their networks when something goes wrong)!

What is that we need to monitor anyway? We split the monitoring world into two basic camps: Flow based accounting and Health checking software. Flow based monitoring enables us to check the source/destination IP address; source/destination port; IP protocol; TOS and Ingress interface. This is helpful when you are trying to figure out what applications are running on your network and who is streaming real time media. Clearly important stuff, but at the end of the day, when it comes to logging into someone’s network remotely and trying to figure out why some remote user has garbled phone calls, there is nothing like an in place Health check!

When we talk about the “health” of the network we are interested in knowing about Bandwidth capacity, Loss, Jitter, Mean Opinion Score (MOS), latency and tagging. These are the words that make a VoIP engineer smile! Would it not be wonderful to log into your clients network and have this kind of history available between key end points of a multi-site deployment? Rarely, do I ever publically endorse a product but the folks Apparent Networks have gone out of their way to make their product available, useable and free! You need to stop what you are doing and download Path View Cloud, a host based network monitoring solution from Apparent Networks.

Not only is this software as useful as a button hole, but you can download a fully functional 5 node solution for absolutely no money! In previous posts I have discussed the fact that, despite best practice, clients continue to attempt VoIP phone deployment over DSL through VPN tunnels! Path View Cloud enables you to collect real time network health information about key end points in your network. Typically, it is the remote user or the WAN points that you are going to want to study. Path View Cloud enables you to create monitoring solutions that regularly report on health checks and trigger alerts when “violations” have been detected. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and you can see packets!

Clearly Apparent Networks believes that offering 5 free nodes will get you to order more! The offer is, however, compelling and I can tell all  you cheap, penny pinching, tight wads that will not invest in network monitoring software, that you will sleep better at night with this Path View Cloud solution in place. Network and VoIP engineers and technicians, you need this arrow in your quiver to make trouble shooting more visual!

DrVoIP Cisco Voip, Shoretel Support and Service, VoIP Tech Tip Voip Deployment, Voip Network Monitoring, voip qos

How many people hit the Auto Attendant and then dialed one for Sales? One of the most requested reports from ShoreTel clients is the analysis of Automated Attendant key strokes. With in the ShoreTel iPBX there are probably several ways to implement this, but we prefer the use of “route points” (see past blog). “ Thank you for calling our company during our normal business hours. For Sales Press 1, for Service Press 2 or stay on the line and the next available member of our staff will be right with you”. Typical Automated Attendant? We set the time out value to go to a “hunt group” and each of the menu items to a route point. You can actually run a User Detail report against a route point, as long as that route point terminates on a Shoretel end point other than a TAPI end point. For this reason, you can then run the report and find out exactly how many callers dialed one for sales!

Recently, we had to create an Automated Attendant on an Enterprise Contact Center. At first this seemed almost boring, but then we ran into an issue. You can use the MENU icon to create your Automated Attendant script, with a TRANFER icon to each destination selected by the caller. You can use the SCRIP icon to send the caller on to a script to collect information like the callers account number for a SQL database look up; but how do you send a caller to “service”? Now that was a more interesting challenge and I have to thank Chad Burnett for pointing out the use of what has become my favorite new ShoreTel ECC scripting icon: “the Change Profile” action. This icon is a powerful call profile manipulator and enables the Enterprise Contact Center configuration to explode with call processing options.

Using the Change Call Profile icon you can select various Call Profiles for manipulation. Each system contains a number of mandatory system level call profiles like ANI and Caller ID. You as a system designer can also create Call Profiles to meet the needs of your exacting design requirements. For example, you might add the Call Profile “Account Code” that you might use in a script that prompts the caller to enter digits that you will use to look up a record in a SQL database.

The Change Call Profile icon also allows you to select a previously defined SERVICE. The following video clip reviews how the iPBX and the ShoreTel ECC interconnect. It demonstrates the use of the Change Call Profile icon, by demonstrating the creation of a simple automated attendant!

DrVoIP Contact Center, ShoreTel Configuration, VoIP Tech Tip ShoreTel ECC, Shoretel Enterprise, Shoretel IPBX

To the sales team, I sound like a broken record as I repeated the engineering driven mantra: “A VoIP solution is only as good as the network it is build on”.     No matter how many times we tell clients that you can not obtain reliable, predictable toll quality voice communications over the public Internet, they insist on having us implement it.   The old marketing adage “you do not give customers what they need, you give them what they want” clearly applies and despite our best arguments to do otherwise; we find ourselves implementing VoIP solutions using VPN over DSL or Cable.   The good news is that when it works,  it is  often useable for inter-office communications.   When it does not work, it sounds like the worst cell phone  call and would not be something that you would use to support business communications with a client.

In the VoIP world in general and the ShoreTel world in particular, there is a measurable performance difference between an MPLS deployment and a VPN tunnel through the public internet.    An appropriately designed MPLS circuit with carrier Service Level Agreements in place will out perform the best VPN tunnel through the public internet.   Yet clients continue to believe they can put a VoIP handset  at the bosses house and run it over a DSL based VPN back to the “puzzle palace” and that it will  perform as well as the phone on his office desk.   The reality of the deployment is that this implementation seldom meets customer expectations.

A ShoreTel deployment of a remote handset for a home based work force can be accomplished under two basic models.   In the more desirable, albeit more costly model,  we create a “site” which involves the placement of a ShoreTel media gateway (read SG switch) at the remote location.  VoIP handsets interact with the SG media gateway or call manager at the remote location for all call setup, addressing, signaling and control.    In the ShoreTel world the call setup between a VoIP handset and an SG media gateway will use the MGCP protocol.   This protocol is a client/server or master/slave model and when compared with other protocols can generally be summarized as complex and “chatty”.   ShoreTel implements SIP for SG-SG communication, but uses MGCP for SG witch to handset call control.  Once a phone call is setup up, only the RTP media stream needs to traverse the VPN tunnel, however.

The other less expensive model s the placement of a remote VoIP handset only.   In this model, the handset is part of the “headquarters” site.  Unfortunately this is the deployment model we see the most when clients attempt to interconnect a single home worker with the corporate network with out the benefit of a carrier SLA.     A DSL, hopefully with a static IP address, and a device that can support a “point-to-point” VPN tunnel are the “minimum daily adult” requirement for VoIP connectivity.   In this model, the VoIP handset is communicating MGCP over the VPN tunnel with a call manager at the headquarters location.  Every handset action, from off-hook to digit key depress, is communicated over the VPN tunnel back to a media gateway at the home office.  Very “chatty”.

As engineers we can talk ourselves into a coma when discussing QOS options, DSCP markings, router queuing strategies and bandwidth reservation parameters.   At the end of the day, however, the only QOS “opinion” that really matters is what the users thinks!   Mean Opinion Score or MOS is the measure of what users rate the quality of a phone call.   Here is what we have learned after supporting hundreds of remote users on none SLA based circuits, typically VPN over DSL and Cable.   Rule one:  use only symetrical circuits (same up and down load speeds).  Rule two: Hard phones beat soft phones; and Rule three:  SIP phones beat MGCP phones.  It is that simple.   If we put a SIP based phone at a remote location, they will out perform an MGCP based handsets on the same circuit as measured by user MOS!  The SIP phone will perform with a higher level of reliability, be more resilient to latency and jitter, and will experience significantly less call disconnects than an MGCP based VoIP handset.

If you study the hosted VoIP service provider market, you will find that the predominant VoIP handset deployment strategy is SIP based.   Why is that?  We could go completely geek on you and  illustrate the complexity of call setup comparing MGCP with SIP setup messages, but why bother.  MOS rocks.  In this environment SIP deployments will yield higher customer satisfaction scores than MGCP deployments.   We are sincerely hoping and praying that ShoreTel has a “SIP firmware load” on the product road map to support their family of outstanding desktop handsets as they do not have a SIP handset solution.    Currently, when we have to support remote workers who insist on running VPN tunnels over DSL and Cable, we deploy Polycom and Aastra handsets to achieve maximum customer satisfaction in the wild west of internet telephony and home based workers!

DrVoIP ShoreTel Configuration, Shoretel Support and Service, Sip Phone, Trixbox Asterisk, VoIP Tech Tip mgcp protocol, sip firmware

Stuck on how to get a WAV file of a professionally recorded voice mail greeting into the right ShoreTel Voice Mail box? After all there is no import utility as there is during the creation of an Automated Attendant. I can’t speak for you, but I was curious to know if I could just copy the WAV file to the mailbox? Where was the mailbox anyway? Now that you mention it, where are the voice messages.

ShoreTel has always had a folder entitled “Shoreline data”, the name a residual of the company’s old name, look and feel. Historically, this folder contained all of the information you would need to have available to restore a crashed server from bare metal. The later releases of ShoreTel have moved configuration files to a MySQL database, but you still need to have this folder to do a system restore. The folder, among other items, contains the voice mail structure of your deployment and the actual voice mail files for each individual mailbox.

In the VMS folder, you will find two folders: “Message and ShoreTel”. The Message folder contains actual voice mail messages in ShoreTel WAV format; and the other folder contains a list of folders that match the number of each mailbox on the ShoreTel deployment. Each VM box folder contains a WAV file for the mailbox name and each greeting recorded in that users mailbox. The greetings have easy to recognize names like 115Greet01_01.wav which represents the Standard Call Handling mode Greeting. If you re-record your greeting you will create a new file named 115Greet01_X.wav, where X is the revision number of the recording.

There is a also a Mailbox.DAT file that contains system configuration information and the unique ID of every message received by that particular voice mail box. The actual voice message, however, is contained in a separate folder appropriately named messages! In this file you will find a unique message WAV file that is the actual voice mail recording. It will have the format 1K0VGJSGI.wav where 1K0VGJSGI being unique message identification. There will also me a matching 1K0VGJSGI.msg file that acts as an index pointed to by the unique message identification written to the DAT file in the individual voice mailbox folder.

ShoreTel has a number of debug and diagnostic tools that can be used to assist in administration and troubleshooting. The CFG.exe program is a useful tool for obtaining information about mailboxes, voice mail servers, phonebooks, automated attendant DNIS maps and other specific voice mail box configuration data. Using CFG you can turn on message waiting lamps, have the voice mail system dial specific extensions, list message details, purge and restore messages and generally manipulate the voice message structure. The three part video clip details all of this information for your education and enjoyment!

DrVoIP ShoreTel Configuration, VoIP Tech Tip, Voip Service & Solutions dnis map, shoreline data, shoretel voice mail