atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems Shoretel Telephones & Systems Shoretel

Bunny,

Not dissagreeing with you necessarily but, fyi

"At least that is until you get phones with voice announce intercom, off hook voice announce, lots of buttons, etc."

Already out there!!! I can even intercom and voice announce to remote sites.


"Oh, maintainance. If you spill water on your pbx phone, you can swap it with another in a minute. Try that with a voip phone that has to be reprogrammed."

ahh, the ONLY thing I have to enter on my sip phones is the mac address and then click a single button for the template I want to use.
CO lines, and call appearences for the station are automaticvally added when I plug the phone in. If I swap out a phone in an Avaya or Panny I have to reprogram the phone the new phone doesn't get the programming from the PBX.

As for your water spill - well this could happen to any phone, but my experience is that very few sub 30 users keep a stack of extra phones on hand "just in case". We, at leat I do, get calls at least once a week to have a phone shipped over night. While on the sip system I can just go to xten, download and install the free version in about 2 minutes and I am talking with full access!

Shoretel aka shoreline is adding features at a rapid pace. One could say that is one of the problems with the system lately. Initially, the reliability was rock solid. The transition to IP phones has been difficult. The TAPI call manager beats the buttons on anyone's BRI phone anyday. Some people however will never, ever use a PC to do any telephony applications. Thats where pushing features out to IP phones is critical. Ive been involved in quite a few larger installations so if anyone has quesitons, post them here and Ill try to answer.

Not a big fan of the Rube Goldberg solution. No one can support it!

Thanks for the input. I like the Shoretel solution also. Has anyone looked at Sphere? If so what do you think of this solution?

I am of the opinion that Cisco offers the best future. They are more expensive, in some cases significantly, in my case they have pretty much matched the Shoretel pricing. The problem is the integration with the desktop is clunky. The features,(like read back Voice Mail and applications to the phone ), are not a big deal at this point for us. I also don't like how they store Voice Mails in yourt EMail account. THis creates storage issues. In the end they are investing more than most, have a great reputation and the money to stay in the game for a long time.

Not a big fan of the Rube Goldberg solution? What?

Who is there that would give up a ring diode matrix that is as stable as an elephant in a gentle breeze?

Have you no idea how many ITT cut off switches have been sold? Why the very idea.

I would say that we do predominently small customers and a friend of mine loves installing and maintaining Shoretel. I'm not far from slowing down a lot, so I'm really not in the busioness of maintaining switches for Fortune 500 customers.

At some point I will sell off the customer base and do enough sales calls to keep body and soul together. I am not one of those young whippersnappers that are strong on data and there will always be a need for salespeople.

I have a hosted Cisco 7960 in my office as part of a sales demo thing and it is OK, but it has such limits on stuff I want that I wouldn't yank out my Toshiba CIX if I could get a free Cisco. If I wanted to link sites with large ACD applications then it would be a totally differt ball game.

I wasn't trying to put down the systems such as Cisco, Shoretel, and such but they are not inexpensive and unless they scale down their price to fit the people who want a dozen phones, key systems will be around for a very long time.

I would say that it is very informational to read what you have posted and that is a very good service to a lot of people.

Thanks, Bunnie

This may be late in coming...

We installed a predictive dialer behind a Shortel (1st one we've run into) and things were up and going in a couple of house - no problems. Which makes me probably more happy than the customer.

I've been selling and installing ShoreTel for almost 5 years now. If anyone would like unbiased info on the system, email me at [email protected].

I have received information from ShoreTel that each switch can have only 8 huntgroups. Is anyone doing anything that requires many inbound call flows with auto attendants directing VM to accounts accessed by multiple users?

Currently we are using IP Office and allowing access to VM boxes by multiple users can only occur using huntgroup VM boxes. Is ShorTel's huntgroup different from Avaya's?

I have encountered a Shoretel and what I saw was slicker than snot on a glass doorknob. I have a customer in DM Iowa who is a distrbutor of a product made in California. They wanted to link their phone systems together, so that support calls could be transferred from IA to CA. My customer in DM has a Norstar 4.1 and the CA customer has a Shoretel.

They wanted high quality voice between the two sites, so VoIP through the internet was out of the question. The CA company bought a shoretel device that will communicate with a nortel via T1 emmulation(we could have done PRI, but caller info was not needed for this application). Then the Shoretel box is hooked up to a point to point data circuit back to the main Shoretel in CA. They get 24 tie lines from a Nortel MICS to a Shortel device.

I set up a routing table where DM customer dials the a 4 digit extension and the routing table routes these calls to the Shoretel in CA, Like wise, I set up target lines to hit the extensions in DM from the Shoretel in CA. Both customers have seemless 4 digit extension dialing and call transferring across the sites. They split the pricey cost of the point to point, so far as I know everyone is happy.

I didn't have to program the Shoretel at all, but when it came to programming the Nortel side, it was a snap. I went to the Shortel website and downloaded the documents from their website on how they liked the T1 on the Nortel side to be programmed so it would work with the Shoretel device. It also looked like this Shoretel would interface with just about anything and easy too. I liked their website and most of what I saw. I am pretty Nortel biased, too.

CaptainSnapple:

ShoreTel has a couple of solutions to handle inbound calls. You are correct in stating that you can only have 8 hunt groups per switch (switches can be stackable--so do not confuse "switch" as one location).

The slickest way is to set up what ShoreTel refers to as "Workgroups". If agents have what is referred to as "Agent Call Manager" then they get get as visual notification of a VM message that is left in a workgroups mailbox. This notification can either be programmed on a soft key on the IP phone model 530 or 560. The best way to get voice mail messages left in workgroups VM box is through the ShoreTel "VoiceMail Viewer." Employees part of the Workgroup that have Agent Call Manager will be able to see New Messages, Old Messages, and Deleted Messages in all the Workgroups that they are a part of. You can have up to 128 Workgroups per ShoreTel system.

The most compelling aspect of the ShoreTel system is your workgroups can be distributed across multiple locations. For example, I could have a Sales Workgroup queue and agents can be located in California, Florida, New York....anywhere on the Network...in an branch office...in a home...wherever. In the latest release...I can be located in my house...VPN to network and tell the system that I am located at my house, hotel, cell phone and get workgroup calls via the PSTN..At this point it is toll quality voice...not IP...but you have to pay for the call.

This is all inherit in the ShoreTel system....they are no add-on adjuncts for this functionality....Only a small one-time licensing fee.

I am a CCVP, I have a lot of experience in the Cisco side of things and also managed a Definity 8700 for a couple of years. Most of my experience is in the enterprise level system and contact centers. I recently took a job as a VoIP business consultant to try and get a Computer Consultants VoIP side of the business off the ground. We had a lot of problems with Cisco, with tyring to sell CallManager, and who knows what 3com is up to with their NBX so we needed another solution. We took a look at what Shoretel had to offer and I have to say I fell in love with the system quick! We are now Shoretel partners and starting the sell the Shoretel solution. I love the features, the contact center part of the Shoretel solution blows a Definity out of the water and the price, ease of setup, and features blow Cisco out of the water (although I love Cisco phones). I have been so happy with the Shoretel solution that I am not thinking about moving in a year just so I can start my own company and sell the Shoretel product.