reskew

is anyone using the softphone capability of IP Office? I have about 5 laptops that have 802.11 wireless capability for traveling project managers. i want to give them access to their phone extensions while sitting in the airport or other hot spots.

Also, if you're using it, could you provide me the U.S. part number. Avaya is no help at all.

Cephas

It works great. You'll get better audio quality if you use a USB headset for the laptops. Also, obviously you'll need a VPN client/server arrangment if you don't already. Caution the client not to expect toll quality voice over the public internet.


SAP codes are:

177468 for 1 PhoneManagerPro licence
171992 for 1 iPhoneManagerPro (softphone) licence

Note that each user of softphone requires 1 of each of both the above licences.

Peter

PBXtech.info

 

jmilikow

Could you give me some guidance on this? I have both of these licenses installed. When I enable VOIP in Phone managers' phone manager preferences - It turns into Phone Manager iPro [username] but the volume control icons are missing. What could I be doing wrong??? Thanks.

Cephas

Any number of issues. This is a very fussy thing, you have to fight with it sometimes. First of all, check in your Phone Manager preferences that Enable VoIP is ticked. If not, tick it then exit and relaunch phone manager.

Second, check your audio settings. Ensure that your headset is set as the preferred device for both record and playback, use only prefered devices is ticked, and that nothing in the volume mixer is muted. Ensure you can use the windows sound recorder utility to record and playback a test wav file.

Finally, if it still doesn't work after the above, possibly throwing in a reboot of the PC and sprinkling a little holy water on the monitor (kidding) verify that you aren't using mixed OS's on your LAN. I have found that if you have a combo of XP Pro and Win2K pro, whichever OS is the first to connect to the IPO will work correctly for all subsequent machines logging in that use that same OS. For example, if someone logs in first using Win2K they and all win2k users will be fine, but XP Pro users will be toast. Same goes for vice versa.

Have you read through the job aid "Phone Manager Notes"?

Peter

dhudgins

You mentioned in your post that you want to give access to their extensions from their laptops using softphone. Are their existing extensions digital hard phones? If so, the softphone solution may not work. We tried to do the same thing in our install and found that in order to use the softphone / laptop solution, the user's extension must be a VoIP extension in the system.

Dave

Cephas

That is true, the usual solution is to then provide coverage from the desk phone extension to the VoIP extension, so if someone calls the desk phone it also rings on the softphone and they can answer either.


Peter

PBXtech.info

 

reskew

I have two more follow up questions.

1. Can a VoIP attached phone (either softphone or VoIP phone) use the same extension? I have a digital phone at my office with one phone number (777-777-7771) and at my home office I have a VoIP phone with a different phone number (777-777-7772). Can't I have one number somehow?

2. Can the softphone work well over a VPN from a home office and then when the employee comes in the office they can connect to the network locally?

Cephas

1. See the previous 2 posts. No they can't have the same number, but you can use coverage to accomplish what you want to do.

2. Yes. "Work well from home" of course depends on the network quality, qos, etc.

Peter

mforrence

One thing your users COULD do is to use the "Hot Desking" feature that is standard in IP Office. This allows you to "log in" and "log out" of a particular telephone - telephone being a TDM phone, IP phone or soft phone. Your extension number essentially moves around with you. When you are logged out, callers go directly to voicemail (or as otherwise programmed). I did this for a couple of attornys who move from one office to another.

Mike