Installing a ShoreTel IPBX solution is a process not an event. I have previously published a book entitled “VoIP System Planning Guide” that can be download from the DrVoIP site. This guide covers the basics for planning and managing a VoIP deployment in general and a ShoreTel solution in particular. The “devil is in the details” however and though the process can be understood, the individual tasks required to complete the process generally prove there is no substitute for hands [...]

The genius mathematician and founder of the area we know as Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener coined the phrase “the human use of human beings”. Writing post WW2, his frame of reference was societies growing concern with automation. The concept should now be understood as “using computers to free humans for more productive work”. So when we encounter an automated attendant or “robot receptionist”, we should remember that the repetitive work of greeting, screening, routing, message retrieval and message acquisition are sometimes [...]

The key word in wireless is “mobility”. Broadband wire line, WiFi, WiMax and even dial-up are technology enablers that provide a solutions for the increasing need to be “connected”. There are issues with each one: broadband service can be expensive, depending on the provider, and it certainly isn’t available in many rural areas; WiFi has very limited range, again limiting coverage, and dial-up is simply slow and can’t come close to meeting requirements for today’s applications. WiMax has gone through [...]

Lets take a look at the impact of SIP – Aide from the pure technology play, SIP represents a fundamental change in the economics of the telecommunications market. The carriage of telecommunications has been in transition with a steady migration for distance sensitive to usage sensitive pricing. Historically there where three components of the cost of a telephone call: origination, interexchange (e.g. Inter-LATA) and termination. The US telecommunications market has been moving toward a consolidation of service providers. Local Exchange [...]

From time to time a new technology comes along that causes a dramatic paradigm shift with significant economic impact. As it relates to the customer premise telecommunications world, there are a number of trends that have the potential of dramatically altering the telecom equipment market place.   Many industry executives have witnessed the switching equipment transition from electro-mechanical technology to solid state and stored program control switching. Clearly the migration from circuit switch to packet switched technology is reaching Tsunami proportions. [...]

Though I know we have readers out there who have never seen a rotary dial telephone (or a 33 RPM record), many readers will be familiar with “star codes”. Star Codes have been generally well known to most phone users since the inception of DTMF dialing. Who has not done the old *82 to block caller ID. In the ShoreTel system, basically every feature has a star code making it possible to use a simple single line telephone set to [...]

Sometimes there is nothing like a telephone lines mans test set to hear exactly what is going on! VoIP solutions have a double challenge: First it is hard to put a butt set on an IP connection; and secondly what happens when that connection hits a gateway at a remote site? This is always a fun situation. ShoreTel has a “trunk test tool” that has some usability. You can actually bring up the test tool, and right click a particular [...]

At one point in the evolution of telecommunications features, least cost routing was so sophisticated a function that it required an external processor. In the early 80’s when most large multi site telephone system installations were based on point to point, private T1 tie-lines the need for cost effective routing between sites was in such demand that a stand alone company of scale was formed to meet that need. In San Antonio Texas, a company still in existence today but [...]

If you are and iPhone aficionado, you absolutely want your iPhone to work  on your ShoreTel IPBX! I recently downloaded VeNetCorps SipPhone fromt the iPhone App store! There are several SIP phone apps at the store, but most have a pre-programmed domain name for the sip registration proxy server. If you want to use your own SIP proxy there was no easy way to change the IP address so you had to hack your DNS to get it to point [...]

Extension Lists are a unique solution for a variety of challenges in the Call Flow War! Does your Automated Attendant have a “spell by name” directory? Does the CEO want to be listed in the spell by name directory? In ShoreTel it is easy enough to disable a name from appearing in the directory, but what about that nasty ability to take action on the famous “if you know your parties four digit extension number, dial it at any time [...]