Basic functions issues

[relionllc]

Hi,

Three topics: speed-dial, intercom and external voicemail.

1) This box competes with some older key systems that often times have lots of buttons, several of which can be configured for speed-dials. I see there are 8 speed-dials available via speed-dial number + #. There is no way to label these for the users though aside from having a cheat sheet taped to the phone. I don't have any suggestions given the limitation of buttons on the phones. I know the SPA500 sidecar is a solution, but then all the users look like they're receptionists with big phones. I'd like to see something competitive on this subject.

2) Huge limitation as far as I understand this system. A two-way intercom pair takes up a button on each phone. That can be ok for a central rececptionist scenario that likely needs a sidecar, but it doesn't work at all for a fairly distributed office where users all need to intercom each other, again without everyone having a sidecar. Seems the old key systems out there do have an easy way to do this. My suggestion for this one (unless there's a better idea out there), is to have a special steering digit for intercom calls, for example the "7" so users could dial 7+10 to intercom extension 10. I've seen something similar in a CME deployment.

3) This is more a feature request. This box is aimed toward the small offices that may typically use POTS lines. Those small businesses are always looking to cut costs and one such way is they may opt to use the telephone companies voicemail rather than premise-based. That way, they can have 2 lines plus a fax, and if a third voice call comes in, it goes right to voicemail. If it's a busy office, with the external VM, they could have 2 simulataneous calls and take virtually limitless voicemail calls at the same time. Here's the request, the phone company will often notify the users by giving a stutter dial-tone, so they know to dial in to the VM server and pull messages. It would be great if the UC320 could pick up on that and light the MWI lamp for the appropriate users and then set the VM button to speed-dial into that external number instead of the internal VM system. Please let me know if I didn't make enough sense on this point.

-Danny

[nalbert]

Danny,

Your feedback is very valueable to us. Please give us some time to take this back to our meetings, debate this and respond to you about what we are doing in this regard.

Navin Albert

[nalbert]

Comments:

1) The SPA 509 has 12 lines with Monochorme LCD. You think you could need more that even that? The UC320W target market is around 16 users. I think the direcotry would be better going bigger that that. please do explain further if I am not getting this right.

2) Again I would think that having two digit extensions is easier than having more than 10 intercom lines. Please let me know if I am missing something here.

3) Thanks for that suggestion. Your feedback is very valuable to us. I have submitted this to the engineer team and the product manager. They will add it to the feature list for consideration. Thanks again.

Navin Albert

[relionllc]

Hi Navin,

1) Yes, for the most part, it's all good, at least any ONE thing. The potential problem is when more than one of these comes up. The Key mode is popular in smaller offices, sometimes they just like to yell, "George, line 1" across the room rather than the 21st century technlogy that is foreign and weird to them sometimes. Now, anything a tad bit larger, maybe a couple small offices, they still like that Key mode, but want the speeddial and intercom functionality. I have a UC540 deployment that fits that description exactly. So, with a UC320, say they want Key mode operation with 3 lines, 8 users. That's 3 buttons for the "lines" and 7 buttons for intercom, would leave 2 open on a 509G, use those for speeddials, and that's it. Take it up a notch, 12 users, 4 lines, now we're back to 500S sidecar. I don't know that there's much that can be done to address this bullet point really.

2) The two-digit dialing and intercom are really 2 very different things and users seem to have a strong preference sometimes. I know I personally use intercom 99% of the time. I understand the technical challenges of some of this, but adding something like an intercom steering digit seems like it would be reasonably easy to enable in the code. Not on a softkey though (a line key would be ok though), those really are a pain to navigate through and intercom should be really easy, especially coming from a competitor's system that makes it one or two button presses.

I'm going to have to play with this some more to see how something works, but here's a related issue, call it 2b. Say the receptionist has her sidecar with 15 users, 15 buttons set as speeddials to each user. I think (I haven't tried it yet) that a receptionist can transfer a call to a user by hitting XFER then then speeddial. If we could make one of the line keys an intercom feature button, like a steering digit, then the receptionist could hit the INTERCOM button, then the user's speeddial to intercom that user. That would cut the necessary buttons in half, at least for the operator/receptionist.

3) Cool.

-Danny

[nalbert]

Danny,

I will pass this feedback to our Phone Product management group and our PBX product management group. I am certain this something that would be discussed heavily is the product stratergy meetings.Thanks for the feedback.

Navin Albert