pscandrett

Hello

We've been using an IP Office 406 system since we moved into this building in 2002 and on the whole it does pretty much all we want it to. The firmware etc has been updated several times, and the desktop software has also.

The (not quite a) problem is that as part of the upgrade we've 'lost' eBLF - which a lot of people liked - and the programs supplied still aren't, well, really very good. Our receptionist uses eConsole now and most people have the 'purple' phone manager on their desktop but as an IT-inclined person I'm sure there's a lot more that could be done with the hooking into the IP Office system for notifications, autocalling etc. Perhaps I'm a little biased because we've had a few problems with the system, particularly in the beginning, but also because some of the software (particularly admin software) just seems to me to be poorly designed and implemented. It's getting better, but it's still not great (for example, our IT guy tells us there's some weird thing to do with saving personal configs with roaming profiles).

I'm vaguely aware that there's an API available but I'm not skilled enough to be able to do anything useful with it (I must admit I've not looked at it at all).

My question is therefore this... are there any other non-Avaya applications out there that will hook into IP Office to provide - well, any functionality via a different method? Are there any open-source projects? Can anyone recommend anything or anywhere to start looking please? We're a charity so aren't keen to spend a great deal on it and I'm willing to investigate stuff myself/implementing simple solutions if it will save money - but also because I like the concept of open-source, in general.

I've had a look at the past posts of this forum but not come up with much... does anyone have any ideas please?

Many thanks

Peter

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Cephas

What exactly do you want to accomplish?

The functionality that was provided by eBLF is now rolled into softconsole, but the way you phrased it suggest you might be confusing the applications - typically softconsole is only deployed for a receptionist not for every (or lots of) user. You can put callstatus on desktops but it's generally not a good idea, except perhaps for a couple of managers. And phone manager provides a BLF field - what more were you looking for?

There are a few 3rd party apps out there but I'm not personally aware of any open source stuff. Again it's hard to make suggestions without knowing exactly what you want from the system that you're not getting currently.

Finally, what firmware version are you running? Do you have VMPro?

Peter

PS what group are you with?

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tlpeter

for blf in softconsole you need a licence
i don't know is this is also with econsole ?
perhaps your license became invalid somehow ???
you can see this in manager under license

pscandrett

Hi, sorry if I wasn't very clear in my original post!

Yes, our receptionist does indeed use softconsole. In answer to your question about what I want to accomplish... well, I'm not totally sure on that front either! I'll try to explain in a mo. I certainly understand about the callstatus and similar stuff; I don't like the idea of giving that to everyone.

OK, thanks for this. As I say, I apologise if I was a bit confusing.

My reasons for asking were generally because, well, the phone manager programs (particularly the 'purple version') are OK but just seem a bit limiting at times.

Let me set the scene for you; we're an organisation with perhaps 50-60 regularly used extensions in the building. When we first got the system in 2002 - and one of the strengths that I think we were sold the system on - was the ability of having the old-style eBLF program on every desktop. Indeed, everyone being able to see the active status of most phones in the building was great. Initially we therefore rolled out eBLF and Phone Manager to all of our users. However, there were problems and bugs in the system and as part of the debugging process the engineers of our support company changed the rules - that there was in fact a system limit of only 4 eBLF programs (or ~200 eBLF 'items') supported by the system and that any more of them being run at a time could result in unpredictable behaviour. To cut a long story short, by this time everyone was using it and loved it, and it was difficult to persuade people not to run it.

Fast forwarding now, to a relatively recent firmware upgrade. eBLF is no longer distributed, and old versions work only functionally - the sort order is now broken (it seems to be displayed in the config file order rather than alphabetically) and it's apparently a miracle that it works at all. The purple Phone Manager is released - functionally it's fine, but why on earth the skin isn't the same as the default Windows style noone knows (or seems to care). I find some slightly less horrible skins via forums like this. People, in general, are happy enough with it but I frequently get comments that the old 'eBLF' with everyone visible was far better!

Consequently I was just investigating what other options might be available and/or if there was any way of hooking the phone system into (say) our intranet or similar...

Does that help explain where I'm coming from a little?

I knew I should have mentioned this beforehand! Looking in Manager, we have an IP406 unit running 2.1 (51), 1 Digital DTx16 4.1(51) and three analogue units (2 x POTS30+, 1 x POTS30V2) all running 4.1 (51). Yes, we have Voicemail Pro.

Erm, I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by this. I work for The Message Trust - The Message Trust.

My role at the organisation has changed since I've been here. When the system was rolled out I was the IT guy here; I've now moved sideways within the organisation (to stage lighting!) but retained a bit of involvement with the phone system. Personally we've had so many problems with the system, particularly in the first year or two of rollout, that my confidence in Avaya-provided programs is fairly low, although confidence in the system itself is growing now. Also I think that (with my IT background) some of the software is generally quite ropey (though again it's getting better) which doesn't help. Our support guys have in general been OK but I sort of get the impression that sometimes the support isn't there further up the chain for them.

Does all this help?

Many thanks for any comments you may have.

cascadia

I agree that Phone Manager (Lite & Pro) both leave a lot to be desired. The default skin is crummy and overly bloated. I agree they should make it more Microsoft Office-esque, and you can adjust the skin. But it is also resource hungry and doesn't exactly lend itself to be a small app on the desktop (even in compact mode it doesn't 'fit' anywhere but over/under other apps). Add in the TAPI manager for use with Outlook and it starts to be really useful. This can be flakey and really hard to use on mobile users with laptops.

I spoke with Avaya about the phone manager last year and they were working to rewrite it. I don't know if/when that would be released, but they know it is an issue. From an IT perspective its really not a nice program to deploy. You can't do a mass install, and upgrades are really tough.

I would love to see a IM type app (like skype, msn msgr, yahoo) to show the BLF's. Make it dockable on the side like Slingbox so other apps can't overlap. Or make it small enough to fit in the title bar like WinAmp has, or make a taskbar tool set like when you minimze Window Media Player. How about an API to setup a web interface with clickable links that activate the TAPI and dial the phone. Think about a Intranet phone list? One big thing I am working on is conference bridges. If I could get a wallboard to display the users (and phone #s) in it on a webpage, people could see who is on the call (Cisco's MeetingPlace has this and it is a great app).

I know there are a bunch of developers for the IPO, but I have no idea who has a pre-made solution for sale.