Solved: Open letter to Cisco regarding the UC320 platform - Page 4

beananimal · ‎12-28-2011

Cisco,

I have never in my life been exposed to a "production" piece of equipment with so many bugs, missing features and oddities as the UC320. While I am sure many of you are working hard to reign in the problems, this platform is an utter embarrassment that should be in the preliminary alpha stages, not a channel product being sold to end users.

It is clear that Cisco has little understanding of how SMALL business works and how SMALL partners work with small business customers. A larger partner may be able to string a larger business along with promises of bug fixes and feature additions while charging them to make things right and.or padding the overall cost to account for the callbacks. True small businesses don't have the time, patience or money to deal with problematic hardware. When a partner sells a small business a piece of technology, it better work (at a reasonable cost) or the technology and the partner are out the door.

I was extremely excited when this system was announced and saw great potential for small business customers and an alternative to the Avaya Partner IP and other platforms targeted at the same demographic. I jumped in and put a UC320 in the office of one of my small customers. This whole experience has cost me the trust of a client and is going to end up costing me $3000-$4000 out of pocket (hardware, labor, travel) to make things right with the customer.

As it stands, countless hours have been spent trying to get this system to operate in a reasonably stable and productive manner. At this time the UC320 system has been reset and reconfigured in KEY mode (this time using 2.1.3(0), as the problems with steering digits, call routing and redial in "hybrid mode" made the system more than a little cumbersome to use. Now in KEY mode, caller ID only works on some stations AFTER a call is picked up. On one station, incoming calls are somehow routed to the "Phone Monitor" buttons instead of the "Shared FXO Line" buttons. The user has to press the monitor button to pick up a call, but the call does not always ring at the station so she has to watch for the lights. While the caller ID functionality is a bit better after the latest firmware update, it is still far from working properly. These basic call routing problems are not reasonable and not acceptable, period. The customer is tired of "we are working on it" and so am I.

Other problems (to mention a few):

The GUI is full of buggy behavior. One example if many: The impendence matching dialog only works the first time around and then the GUI loses track of what it is doing and must be reset.
It takes 7-10 minutes for the GUI to load to the login screen over a remote connection. The UC320 is connected to a Verizon DSL, while not blazing fast it is a decent connection. Initial GUI loading on the LAN is almost as bad.
The IE9 product that ships with every new Windows computer is not compatible with the GUI. This is not reasonable.
The AA is somewhat unpredictable with regard to picking up calls and sometimes results in a busy tone and dropped call, even if the call is the ONLY call on the system. Sometimes the prompts are garbled and sometimes the AA does not even pick up.
Steering digit redial issue - still not addressed. Redial on hybrid mode is useless, as is the phonebook.
Caller ID only works part of the time, yet on every other system I have ever used, it works 100% of the time. This is not acceptable.
Answered calls on shared FXO lines show as MISSED on other stations with those lines. The workaround: remove the missed calls display feature. This is not acceptable.
Thus UC320 is not happy unless it is the only router, DHCP and DNS client on the LAN. The grayfield implementation appears to fail no matter what LAN topology and equipment are used. This device is far from friendly to the typical SBS or existing LAN with a dedicated DNS and/or DHCP server.
The handsets have a cheap feel to them compared to the Avaya and other competitors phones.
The sound quality of the ringtones is almost laughable if not sad
The speakerphone quality and overall voice quality are not as good as the competition's.
The filtering functionality of the logging feature does not appear to work properly
Firmware updates often result in a HANG condition where either the GUI needs reset, the system needs a physical reset and/or sometimes defaulted
Firewall port forwarding rule oddities where a rule is deleted from the gui but is still active in the firewall, yet the inability to easily use another data router to work around this problem.
The inability of the device to properly use the LAN port for INTERNET based functionality (Time for example) if the WAN port is NOT connected,
countless other 'issues" raised in the support forum and other venues...

These are ALL very basic functions that one would expect to be fixed BEFORE a basic telephone system platform is released for production. It is absolutely unreasonable for a CUSTOMER to have to put up with a system this buggy and it is absolutely unreasonable for a partner to have to devote this much time and money to getting system to work at even a very basic level of functionality.

To repeat the scenario: This config is as basic as it gets running 2.1.3(0) with (3) system phones, (3) users, (2) pots trunks and that's it. There are no odd call routing scenarios, no complex AA rules or schedules (in fact the AA is defaulted, including prompts). All (3) system phones have BOTH shared FXO lines (KEY MODE). Each and every firmware version has been tried and the system has been defaulted numerous times. The system fails to meet even the most basic expectations of myself or the end user and has become a sore spot between our company and a very good client.

I am somewhat baffled, if not outright bothered by the fact that this device is riddled with so many problems and the fixes are taking so long to be implemented, if at all. I have been asked (ordered) by the customer to get this "hunk of crap" out of their office and replace it with something that works "at no additional cost". I could not agree with the customer more...

A very unhappy Cisco Partner.

William Burnett

paolo bevilacqua · ‎06-22-2013

Dogus Yalman wrote:

Hello;

I have just purchased UC320W with 5x SPA 303 Phones

I just saw these comments and it put me off a bit.

Does UC320W have a client for Android and iPhone ?

I want to give a remote extesion to a cell phone via Internet only.

Is it a supported feature ?

No.

dogusyalman · ‎06-22-2013

Is it at least in the to-do list or it is never going to be implemented ?

Christopher Rogan · ‎06-22-2013

I think pretty much the product will be dropped and EOL'd over the next 12 months or so. I don't think the Cisco people actually know themselves, but given it's received no firmware updates in what seems like a lifetime and the features promised two years ago when the product launched haven't transpired you can take it as read that their attentions are elsewhere. My advice to anyone is to steer clear of this unit - until you see a Cisco employee on this forum publishing a roadmap you have no idea of it's future. I completely agree with John Hoyt - a little money could have made this product have a happy future - now you see the amount of Asterisk appliances being developed by other vendors it's clear Cisco have lost the edge.

beananimal · ‎06-22-2013

Chris,

I would argue that the never had "the edge" with Asterisk or any other SMB voice platform. The entire catalog of products (for that matter most any of the "SMB" products) have been poster children for Cisco's ham-fisted floundering in the SMB market.

RE: no firmware updates in what seems like a lifetime:

Even when the developers were in full stride, updates were few and far between at best.

Throwing money at this platform would not have helped. It was a disaster from the onset.

systemwise · ‎06-26-2013

I'm in the process of installing a UC320 now and I have to say that it's very straight forward to get configured and it has so much potential to improve. I really hope that Cisco bring out a smart phone app, teleworker feature, a good cordless phone (no work arounds!) and make the WAN issue simpler. with this, it would be almost perfect for me and my clients.

Until then, we can only pitch this system to clients who have very basic requirements.

It's a good product, it just needs a little cisco love!

beananimal · ‎06-26-2013

Paul:

Nobody said that it wasn't straight forward. If you actually take the time to read the "open letter" and the followup comments, you will find that the issues have more to do with overall system stability, the lack of promissed and industry common features, and the fact that upates were slow at best, even in the prime of the product development.

Respectfully, your post blindly ignores the context of this thread (hell this entire forum), AND the fact that this product has had almost zero development in over a year.... You are asking for features that are never going to appear, and even if they do, the platform is far from stable or usable in any reasonable deploymnet, compared to any other competing platform. It is a steaming hunk of crap that no amount of Cisco love will ever be able to fix.

THe big question is, given the current state of this project and its history (painted all over this forum) who in the world talked you into selling the platform to a customer? Wow....

systemwise · ‎06-26-2013

William,

Thanks for your courteous and respectful reply. My comment above has alluded to the fact that this product is under developed and has it's limitations. Infact, i've been selling UC320's to customers for over a year, my clients are happy, and the installations have been profitable.

I was one of the first posters in this thread over a year ago and know it's weaknesses and limitations well.

It's not a perfect product, it needs development but in my opinion it's not a bad product and i'll continue to sell it to clients that I know their requirements will be met.

If I had the problems that you have faced with your UC320 installs, it'd have walked away form Cisco and gone elsewhere. There are plenty of alternative products. Why are you still wasting your time on it?

All the best, Paul.

michael022 · ‎08-06-2013

I just wanted to thank you and everyone else in the thread for posting about these WAN problems. I have spent way too many hours trying to make this thing work, and now I see that I really can't, the way I want it to work. I've used several phone systems before, and while this one works very nicely, this is a real problem for us. Why can't the thing just be content being a node on a network? Why does it have to be in control?

Anyway, I learned here how to get the time set, so that's done, and my WAN port remains empty.

Now, if only there was a way to get VMs to email without it, I'd be closer to finished.

CaptMorgan74 · ‎08-09-2013

I just finished installing a UC320 at my company, and I have to say we are quite pleased with its operation so far. We were upgrading from a 20 year old PBX that had all the functionality of cans and string. We've had the UC320 up and running for about a month now with few problems. We are using it in combination with a SPA 8800 gateway for our 8 FXO lines and also to power analog extensions in our production area. We have 16 SPA303 in the offices.

The only issue that I have had was getting the unit setup as a network appliance. We are currently running it with the WAN port unplugged. The only issue I had was setting the system time, but that was easily fixed via the phone interface. Once I got the system up and running and some initial call flow bugs worked out, it is very easy to maintain. The AA works great we have one primary menu that then feeds into three department submenus.

That said, not many SMBs have their own dedicated IT guy to fix little hiccups. Something that may take me a few seconds to fix may translate into hours when an SMB has to call an IT company for support. Our old PBX may have lacked some of the functionality of newer systems, but the thing was a tank.

One feature that is missing from virtually every sytem I looked at prior to buying the UC320 is the ability to do a hook flash. That would be a much more effient way to transfer calls to outside lines.