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Computer Telephony - Newtphone's October Technical Newsletter
Applicable to: Canada, United States
This edition of NetPhone's Technical Newsletter (October 18, 1998) covers the following topics:
Also, our Technical Support section on the NetPhone web site has been updated with a new site planning guide, along with several new installation checklists. These checklists include Pre-Installation, Installation Requirements, Network Requirements, Wiring Requirements, and Post-Installation. Comments and questions regarding the newsletter or web site can be submitted to NetPhone through email at support@netphone.com. NetPhone technical support is available Monday through Friday from 8:00am to 6:00pm EST.
The next training seminar is scheduled for Washington,; DC on October 28 and 29th. Seminars for the remainder of 1998 are scheduled for Chicago, Tampa, and San Francisco. For more information about the seminars refer to
our web site at www.netphone.com. To register call us at 508-787-1000 and speak with either Kerri Carland (x217), Jim Walsh (option 3), or Rachel Elias (option 3).
1. Speaker Phones. Speaker phones must be self powered either by a battery or by way of an external power pack. The NetPhone PBX does not provide sufficient current to adequately power a speaker phone without the battery or power pack. Poor speaker phone sound quality is probably a result of insufficient power. If speaker phones are a requirement for your end-users, be sure to purchase phones that are self powered. In the next issue of the newsletter, I will publish a list of phones that NetPhone has qualified.
2. Telco Roll-Over/Hunt Sequence and Direct Trunk to Extension Mapping. Beware, when mapping a trunk directly to an extension for a fax machine or for other purposes such as a dedicated phone device, be sure to remove that trunk from the telco roll-over/hunt sequence. Otherwise, the connected device may pickup instead of the auto attendant or the designated receptionist. This can occur if an incoming call, while going through the telco hunt sequence, selects a trunk that is directly mapped to a device such as a fax machine. Some incoming calls that should be going through the auto attendant or receptionist may be routed incorrectly.
3. Call Pickup (*5 and Cover Groups). We recently discovered a problem using the call pickup feature (*5) and the equivalent feature in PhoneMaster where a call can be picked up through a cover group. .
When picking up another ringing phone using *5 (or through a cover group in PhoneMaster), the phone that was originally ringing does not hang-up even though the call was successfully picked-up by another phone. When the phone that was originally ringing is later taken off hook, there is no dial tone and DTMF is not recognized if you attempt to dial digits. The phone will return to a working state once you hang up and try again.
Example: An inbound call is made, auto attendant picks up, and the caller dials x203. Extension 203 rings and the person at extension 205 hits *5 to pickup the call. Ext 205 successfully picks up the call.
Later, when extension 203 (phone that was originally ringing) is taken off hook, the user cannot dial any digits and there is no dial tone. The extension appears to be connected in some unknown state. Hanging up the phone will free up the extension and a call can now be made.
Note: The problem will only occur if there is no forwarding set for the extension being picked up. If forwarding is set (to voice mail or to another extension), everything will function properly. Therefore, as a workaround make sure that all extensions are forwarded to either voice mail or to another extension.
This problem was originally reported in release 2.4.1 as a call pickup problem where the call pickup feature appears to get progressively worse. The problem will be resolved in a future release of the product.
4. Beware when Mapping a Trunk directly to an Extension.
There are a number of forwarding issues that are related to configurations where a trunk is directly mapped to an extension. For example, when using the translation table entry {!L5}[~]0 X5, where trunk 5 is directly mapped to physical line 5, certain forwarding conditions will not work in the expected manner for calls made on trunk 5 (or any trunk directly mapped to an extension).
These issues are outlined below:
a. When DND is ON with forwarding set to go to voice mail immediately, the caller is transferred to the auto attendant instead of voice mail as expected. After the auto attendant answers the call and plays through to completion, the call is then transferred to the appropriate voice mail box. However, when DND is ON and the forwarding option is set to an extension (except *88), the caller is correctly transferred to the designated extension without going through the auto attendant.
b. With DND not set, and forwarding (the "otherwise" rule) is set to voice mail after 2 rings, the caller is correctly transferred to voice mail after the 2 rings. However, if the extension is busy, then the caller is incorrectly transferred to the auto attendant after 2 rings. Upon completion of the auto attendant message, the caller is then transferred to the appropriate voice mail box.
c. In this configuration, calls cannot be forwarded to an outside phone. Again, the call will be routed back to the auto attendant instead of the intended external phone number.
There appears to be some variations of these problems depending on the numeric difference between the number of rings of the auto attendant for the particular trunk and the number of rings set before forwarding.
This configuration of mapping a trunk directly to an extension was originally intended to connect a fax machine to the NetPhone PBX. This configuration is not currently recommended for a personal extension due to the forwarding problems described above.
These forwarding issues will be resolved in a future release of the product.
5. Bypassing the Auto Attendant. There are a number of accounts that prefer to have all calls answered by a person rather than the auto attendant. However, with the NetPhone PBX, all incoming calls are switched through the auto attendant. Furthermore, incoming calls will display as ringing at X1 before the auto attendant answers giving the operator/receptionist visibility to all incoming calls (unless rings before auto attendant is set to 0). Note that by design, X1 will ring prior to the auto attendant picking up. X1 will stop ringing once the auto attendant answers. If the caller does not enter an extension during the auto attendant recording, the call will be transferred to X1.
There are two ways of bypassing the auto attendant:
a. If the requirement is to have the auto attendant pickup only when the operator is not available or cannot pickup the call, then simply increase the number of rings before auto attendant answers for each of the incoming trunks. Depending upon the call volume, set this parameter to 5 or 6 thus allowing time for the operator to pickup before the auto attendant. If this is not sufficient time, then increase the parameter to 7 or 8. In any case, incoming calls will be displayed at X1 for the designated number of rings before the auto attendant answers.
b. Some clients may prefer to have all incoming calls answered by a receptionist and never go to the auto attendant. To ensure that incoming calls never get picked up by the auto attendant, simply create to a zero length ATTEND.MU file and set the number of rings for each trunk to atleast 2. With the zero length file, there will be no auto attendant recording and all incoming calls destined for the auto attendant will be visible to the receptionist through PhoneMaster and forwarded to X1.
6. Long Distance Access Codes. With all the competition for your long distance service, it is now possible to obtain long distance service by simply dialing an access code. For example 1010321 + 1+area code + 7 digit number. To use an access code for long distance calls requires a change in the translation table. The following example will route all long distance calls (11 digit number) through the 1010321 service. The entry below replaces line 156 (right side) in the default translation table.
91[23456789]$$$$$$$$$
{!C1}[{!C2}[{!C3}[L=1010321,1@(1:10)]]]
In this example, the statement allows class of service 4,5,and 6 to access this long distance service by automatically inserting the access code "1010321" in front of the long distance number that was dialed by the user.
7. NT Licensing Requirements. Microsoft allows two types of client licenses for its NT servers, per seat and per server/connection. You must decide which approach is best suited for your business. With the per seat license, you need to purchase a license from Microsoft for each user account that will log in and use the domain. For example, if you have 100 user accounts, you will need 100 licenses. Each user can access all the NT servers in the domain.
The per server/connection license works differently. With a 100 per server/connection license, you can have 100 user logged into a server at any one time. Therefore, if you have an environment with 200 accounts, only 100 will be able to be logged in concurrently. The 101st user will to wait until a connection becomes available. This approach may be preferable in an environment where you have multiple shifts or where the users do not require a permanent connection to the server.
Note that a license and server connection is required for access to voice mail and to refresh the company database. Access to the telephony server through PhoneMaster alone does not require a server license.
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04-11-98 | |
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