Best Features 7

[crumthwacket]

This is more sales/marketing oriented than technical. What do you consider the top 5 or so most beneficial features of the IP Office? I have found Voice Mail Pro to be a powerful application for a small additional cost (we don't sell any systems without it). We haven't sold many systems with Mobile Twinning, but we hope to do so in the coming year; Contact Store (not an Avaya application) has been a hit for those accounts that have a need for this kind of storage and retrieval. CCC leaves me cold, although that could be my fault (attention deficit disorder on my part, maybe?)

I realize that all installations have different requirements and we tailor each system to meet specific needs, but in general, what are your favorite features or applications?

 

[aarenot]

64 channel conference bridge is pretty much unheard of for free out of the box. Many times my sales guys did not even use it as a tool, but turned out in implementation the feature set up to allow people to have their own conference bridge was something that made certain users rave to the management. Often times these guys end up being the users that are considered key players by management, like sales guys conferencing sales engineers into customer meetings on the road, or in presentations over the prospects conference room phones in multiple offices via their personal conference bridge.

 

[crumthwacket]

Good one! I keep forgetting that it's there, but have seen lots of smiles after turning it up.

 

[sizbut]

Not best features - avoid CCC and IMS. For some people they might be just perfect, but they have such serious issues to get installed and working correctly that they will turn your techs against you and IP Office big time.

Plus side:

- Phone Manager Lite: Its free and a works. I know the Avaya product managers hate it as its free and they get no states about its uptake.

 

[crumthwacket]

sizbut: my feelings as well.

Anybody else care to contribute? So far best features are Voice Mail Pro, Conference Bridge, Contact Store, and Mobile Twinning. Least popular: CCC and IMS.

 

[IPOfficeIreland]

the CCC is still very good. I know it has its problems but compare it to a lot of systems out there and you start to see the positive side too.

Hot Desking feature - fantasic, works perfect, no license needed, all from the pbx. Again compare to other systems this is a winner for large organisations.

Site to Site PBX - numerous ways to do this, IP link, SCN, SIP, Qsig.

Remote Worker - 1 boss with a phone at home, having to get a vpn router just for this was a sale looser. now with vpn remote client software built in, can make a sale.

TAPI from the PBX. We work with a few different providers and all need a Tapi Server. Your client connects to this server and in turn to the pbx. Always problems. Customer never wants to dedicate a server just so he can dial from outlook. Avaya does this straight to the PBX and it works, license free.

 

[fshaw]

From the user side, Phone Manager and dialing from Outlook are big. Visual Voice is much more popular than expected.
From the other side, SCN, a usable progamming interface, and the flexiblity of hunt groups (especially compared to AVAYA's other systems like Partner and Magix) are all big winners.

Frank

Frank Robertshaw
The Phone Guy
Nashville, TN

 

[tlpeter]

I think the best feature is the quick reboot !

Only the index is quicker as far as i know
A lMany system are down for 15 minutes till 45 minutes only for a reboot

SCN is a very good feature and of course vmpro


ACA - Implement IP Office
ACA - Voice Services Management
______________
Women and cats can do as they please and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea!

 

[IPOfficeIreland]

on the rebooting side - changes to sip needing a reboot, what a pain. this will have to be addressed in next release!

 

[IPGuru]

the popularity of Visual voice is no supprise to those of us in europe who had access to 2030/50 handsets untill V3.0

The return of this feature finally makes to 54XX handset usable!

SCN is great for networked sites, VM pro is excelent.
but I think the greatest feature is that the system can achieve almost all of the customers requirements without them being aware of its complexity or how difficult it would be to achieve on another platform.

The IPO is a deceptivly simple system to administer

 

[1043]

The ease of Pri configuration and DID mapping. Anyone coming from Magix/Lenend world will understand.

 

[aarenot]

OK, Maybe this is not a feature, but within VMPRO the ability to set up an AA for recording anything you want like hunt group greetings, AA greetings, etc., etc. You create a SC to lead to it, and a pin code to access it, and then they have an AA that says press one to record the day greeting, press 2 to record the night greeting, press 3 to record the etc., etc., etc. No offense if any local administrators read this but there are some who even have trouble with this, so it sure makes it easier to be able to tell them dial XXXX, and follow the directions when they call to get help.

The next best thing in VMPRO is the ability to copy, and paste so they can duplicate anything you have set up no matter how complicated it is. I think with my starter package VMPRO DB I could walk an admin through creating the VMPRO call flows themsleves if they were a good listener with copy n paste.

 

[crumthwacket]

Thanks to all who took the time to post a reply.

 

[technicaluser4]

Have you ever tried the VmPRO with the TTS engine to read your e-mail from Microsoft Exhange!
Its owesome!

As soon as I show this to some prospect customers, in most of the times it turns out in a sale!

I conference my prospect customer with voicemail, ask him to send me an e-mail and i make him listen to it there and then. They are simply impressed!

 

[sizbut]

I'm waiting for the day that TTS is good enough that we can ditch the recorded prompts (and yes, I know that really down to the TTS software rather than IP Office).

 

[ProviderReborn]

I'd say one of the best current bits to the IP Office range has to be the new 500.
Fantastic piece of kit, in our company they are smashing over panasonic and toshiba with the build up from nothing pricing.

Licenced ISDN30 bringing the cost down further. Daughter cards giving fantastic scalability and for those small customers with bits of this and that easier to converge over to IP Office.

Oh and manager. One program to program a soe - 412 - 500 all the same. I know sw levels were a pain but even this is better now.

I loved working with IP Office and cannot wait to see what we got coming in later release.

ACA - IP Office Implement
ACA - IP Telephony
CCENT - Cisco ICND1
CCNA - Working towards.

 

[ronromano]

Maybe I have been selling IPO to long and I can't see the forest from the trees, but I can't come up with one feature or another that stands out. To me they are all great. Vm to email out of the box, The way VM Pro works and it's "Visio" layout (that knocks customers out when I show it to them), Manager it awsome, Twinning, CID attached to the message. CID routing for message retieval, test variables that open endless possibilities. Upgrades are easily done. The ability to breakup long AA greetings into smaller parts is wonderful.

I could go on and on. I'm up against Cisco tomorrow, I needed to give myself a pep talk. They don't stand a chance. CLI my ass.

 

[aarenot]

Ron,
One thing I ask my customers to do when they are considering Cisco which I might suggest you try. Ask them to call for help with a system outage to their local Cisco vendor at 3 AM, and call you to at that same time with no prior notice. Just wait, and see who responds according to their expectations, and purchase accordingly. Traditional Telecom companies have no competition when it comes to support for dial tone, traditional telecom guys consider dial tone an inalienable right in most cases, traditional data companies do not seem to have that type of commitment.