This reliability can be augmented by provisioning two methods of backup voice switches:

Inter-Site

This solution is ideally suited for distributed systems comprised of a larger HQ location and any a number of branch locations. Dedicated spare IP phone resources can be provisioned at the HQ location to serve the entire system i.e. any voice switch failure at a branch location will result the branch IP phones switching over and receiving service from the HQ voice switches.

This is extremely cost effective and leverages the statistical likelihood that only one branch will have a local voice switch outage at a given time.

Intra-Site (aka: N+1)

IP failover within a site is a second option of course. This might be considered for the HQ location itself or for larger semi-autonomous branch locations. This option requires spare voice switch at the location itself. What distinguishes the ShoreTel solution again is the efficiency with which the spare capacity can be provisioned.

Let’s take an example of 180 IP phones at such a location. A nominal implementation might be to deploy two voice switches capable of supporting 90 phones each. However by deploying 3 voice switches with spare capacity a more optimal backup scenario can be created: the three voice switches each nominally serve 60 phones (i.e. they each have spare capacity of 30 phones).

A failure in any of one of the three voice switches will result in the affected phones seamlessly moving over to the spare capacity on the other two voice switches. So the cost of providing backup services is 50% or less over the nominal cost of the required resources compared to 100% for more conventional redundant solutions from other vendors.

It is even possible to combine these two options and this allows ShoreTel to deliver an extremely robust UC platform.

We had the vision of inspiring our partners to create and execute joint marketing activities with ShoreTel, and this is exactly what we designed these classes to do.

At ShoreTel, we have always held the opinion that customer retention, growth and satisfaction stem from a thriving and successful partner ecosystem. To achieve this, we decided to initiate a series of events, which would educate channel marketing professionals with the very latest industry ideas, concepts and practises. As a first step, we hired marketing specialists Bowan Arrow to design one day sessions which would provoke discussions, debates and actions. We wanted these sessions to originate individual marketing plans, into which fulfilment ShoreTel would invest.

Each one of our channel partners brings specific expertise, whether it is vertical understanding, or horizontal technical expertise, to the customers that they serve. What we wanted to do with the Accelerate programme, was to grow their businesses by providing the tools and education needed for them differentiate and make themselves heard in the competitive, noisy market of unified communication solutions.

As of today, we have over 30 joint marketing campaigns agreed and underway in the UK channel as a direct result of the Accelerate Marketing Knowledge series; some backed with 100% funding from ShoreTel.

The next Accelerate Marketing event will be held in the autumn, when attending partners will report on their successful campaigns and share best practice with the community.  We also plan to reward the most proactive partner marketer with personal incentives, as well as recognise the businesses that have been commercial successful through joint initiatives with ShoreTel.

From the outset we viewed the Accelerate marketing Knowledge project as a long term investment that encouraged personal development, as well as commercial success. The feedback we gather from the sessions is overwhelmingly positive and the attendance numbers reflect how much value our partners get from this training.

The customer wanted their Contact Center agents to know whether calls were in queue or not. They wanted them to really know…with a lighted beacon installed in their call center. When calls were in queue the beacon should flash continuously.

Alert beacons are common in call centers and, using a simple electronic device known as a ring detector, a phone call can be made to trigger all kinds of lamps, horns, door openers, etc. (Non-endorsed example: http://www.vikingelectronics.com/products/view_product.php?pid=169)

ShoreTel’s Contact Center provides a Real-Time Group Activity event feed, which can broadcast events, including the number of calls in queue for each Contact Center group. Professional Services developers created a Windows service that subscribes to the event feed, and when calls are in specific queues, call out to a pre-configured telephone number, continuously until calls are no longer in the queue. The customer simply connects the target analog telephone to their ring detector device controlling the beacon. The beacon signals when calls are in queue, and goes dark when the queue is idle.

Each Contact Center group can be configured to be associated to a different target phone number so multiple alert devices could be used, one for each group, perhaps with different color beacons.

To explore enhanced and custom applications like this one, contact ShoreTel Professional Services at ProfessionalServices@shoretel.com or +1 800-425-9385 x3331.

For companies like the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, that means a huge spike in seasonal orders. The National Retail Federation says that Mother’s Day is the second leading gift-giving holiday with consumers expected to spend more than $14B.

To handle the Mother’s Day rush, Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory leverages ShoreTel unified communications solutions.

Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is an international franchisor, confectionery manufacturer and retail operator with hundreds of stores in the United States, Canada and the United Arab Emirates. From its 53,000 square foot factory in Durango, Colo, the company manufactures an extensive line of premium chocolate candies and other confectionery products to supply its many franchise locations, delivered fresh by its fleet of refrigerated trucks.

In 2011 they realized they needed to make some changes to their older phone system. Their old phone system was obsolete and becoming more unreliable, resulting in system down time. They reviewed many VoIP products and chose ShoreTel based on the ShoreTel demo and their long-standing relationship with their partner – Real Time Networks.

They purchased ShoreTel phones and workgroups, which helps their customer service group take catalog orders, assist with online orders, and place orders for their franchise stores calling in to replenish inventory items.

The benefits have included improved reliability, easier conferencing capabilities, partner support and cost savings from canceling their legacy maintenance agreement.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mom’s out there. May you all get something sweet this year.

I wanted to provide an update on ShoreTel’s direction for Instant Messaging and Presence.

We recognized years ago that IM would become strategic for most organizations. We acquired the core XMPP server technology to embed natively into our system. XMPP (compared to SIMPLE- SIP for IM) scales in a very economic fashion and thus fits perfectly with our low cost of entry and low TCO goals. To our knowledge, only three UC vendors have a true standard-based (SIP or XMPP) IM based server: Microsoft, Cisco and ShoreTel. This technology is key to be able to expand the basic IM functionalities with future federation standards. Most other vendors have to use to third party technology to deliver IM functionalities, most notably Avaya with their Avaya Presence Server partially built using OEM technologies from… Jabber, Inc, now Cisco.

ShoreTel 12 was the first release with built-in IM technology, in addition to audio conferencing and application sharing. This functionality offers a very cost efficient option to customers who want to boost collaboration without having to deal with Lync deployment complexity. A significant number of prospective customers looked at Lync for IM or collaboration, but the combination of our pricing structure, simple appliance-based model and integrated management led the majority of them to choose our built-in collaboration functionalities.

On the other hand, we addressed the Microsoft IM server install base by allowing our UC desktop clients to leverage an existing Microsoft IM infrastructure. So you can use our Communicator client for call control, visual voicemail, video, softphone and IM by leveraging the MS Lync server. We have been shipping this functionality since 2008. We intend to continue to invest in these two approaches: an IM open strategy with MS Lync or the alternative IM solution built into our UC system.

We announced ShoreTel 12.3 this week: it is designed to meet the growing demand from large organizations. It supports up to 10,000 concurrent instant messaging clients, 1,000 audio conferencing ports, and 500 Web conferencing ports.

More IM announcements will be made over the summer.

Stay tuned…

We’re really excited about the promotional incentive for bundled offerings w/ Polycom & HP (and really, “excited” is an understatement). So are they:

HP, Tom Williams, Business Alliance Manager

Polycom, Tom Kelly, VP of American Distribution and Channel Partners

Like we said, the combined offerings are delivered via ShoreTel resellers that can design, implement and support all three products, providing customers with a single point of contact.

See just a few for yourself:

The answer is “yup” and here’s how:

This script is built with the ever-flexible IVR Applications Markers in ECC scripting. The idea is to create Application Markers that are named as your survey questions, that’s the whole trick.

We line them up in the right order with your questions in a wav file then request a “press 1 for yes, 2 for no” or “on a scale of 1 to 5” keypad based response depending upon the question. Regardless of the “answer path” taken, all roads lead to the next question.

You can string these together in one script, make multiple scripts with one question per script and rearrange to your heart’s content. You could build a nice easy Transfer button for the Agent in Communicator as well. Here’s the script with 2 questions; one is a yes/no the other is a 1 through 5 type of question:

Since we’re using the IVR Application Markers this means Real Time and Historical reporting is as easy as any other reports in ECC.

I set up my Real Time IVR Apps Report and added these new “apps” to the report. I can also open a second separate IVR apps window for just the Survey if so desired. This shows that in my current interval “Yes” outruns “No” 10-3 and we have a collection of “Q Scores” but no “1’s (bad score) in my current 15 minute interval:

In my Historical Report I see a bit more depth and a wider range of data since that’s what I asked for. We have all the reporting delivery options available to us. I could break these out to different reports if needed – export to SQL, HTM (web), XLS, PDF and deliver this data to the appropriate people or applications in their required format:

Seventeen out of 20 “respondents” answered “Yes” to good service for question # 1 and 17 out of the same 20 rated their experience on a 5 scale as “Medium” or better (3,4, or 5).

Not too shabby but we can always do better.