The Message - Enabling Technologies Winter Newsletter

In this Issue:

• New Lync Mobility App Available
• Unified Communications ROI Revisited
• New Maintenance Emergency CEBP App available
• Lync Spotlight - First Reserve
• After the Implementation -Managed Support Services?
• Pros and Cons of Prairie Fyre - Contact Center Solution for Lync
• XP at End of Life
• Special Endpoint Promotions
• FAQ Corner

Microsoft released Lync Cumulative Update 4 December 12th, 2011. This release makes Lync Mobile available on most third-party mobile devices, including Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, and Droid devices. The mobility features of Lync Cumulative Update 4 (CU4) software will allow users to:

1. Stay connected, while controlling their availability
2. Communicate with a single, consistent identity
3. Join audio conferences with a single touch
4. While using a familiar, and intuitive design

Users will be able to download the apps at no charge. Those that want to use IM/Presence simply need a Lync Standard CAL for their username, while those that want to use the enterprise voice features need a Plus CAL.

Not all devices will have the same features.

IM/Presence

Most IM / Presence features are supported on all devices. You must have a fairly new device i.e. iOS iPhone 4+ and Android 2.3+

Click-to-Join Conferences

To join a conference with a single touch, the experience is most intuitive with Windows
Phone.

Note that since the iPad is not a true 3G voice device, iPad users need to program the phone number of a paired device (i.e. home #, mobile phone #) to take outbound calls or conf call
back.

Voice Integration

Finally, with Outside Voice features, the Droid platform is not fully compatible, due to all the
different platforms that Droid runs on.

Speaking of outside voice, the phone calls will traverse the cellular network, not the IP network. With single number reach, a user receives calls on a mobile phone that were dialed to the work number. With Call via Work, the user places an outbound call from a mobile phone by using a work phone number instead of the mobile phone number. To use Call via Work, a user can either dial directly from the mobile phone or use dial-out conferencing. With dial-out conferencing, the user in effect requests the Mobility Service to make the call for them. The server initiates the call and then calls the user back on the mobile phone. When the user answers, the server completes the call by dialing the other party. By using Call via Work, the call recipient does not see the caller's mobile number, and the caller avoids incurring outbound calling charges.

Note, there is no way to hand active calls between cellular and WiFi networks.

On the server infrastructure, it’s more than a typical CU. Server analysis, DNS, certificate, and Reverse Proxy changes are needed. Enabling Technologies has installed this mobility app and are blogging about our experiences at: Enabling Technologies Blog

For customers already on Lync 2010, Enabling Technologies is offering a quick and very cost-effective CU4 upgrade package. This Promotional Offer is available for $4,000 (does not include travel and expenses). Please contact your regional sales director or info@enablingtechcorp.com

Unified Communications Return on Investment Revisited

Back in 2007 when Enabling Technologies started with the Microsoft Unified Communication applications such as Exchange Unified Messaging and Microsoft Lync Server (it was called Office Communications Server then) we wrote about POTENTIAL savings and ROI. Now that it's 2012 and 5 years later we can examine ACTUAL ROI with the help from Marty Parker and Don Van Doren at Unicomm Consulting. Many organizations are under tighter scrutiny about expenditures and we want to make sure to point out the many benefits associated with your Unified Communications road map and plan. To sum the benefits up in an easy to digest format, Unicomm consulting created this handy chart below that documented actual savings per user - per year, as documented in published case studies:

New Maintenance Emergency IVR system for Lync CEBP application available

We recently developed a custom app for a client that works with Lync to handle maintenance emergencies in an efficient manner. The application developed allows a person to leave a message that will quickly get the attention of the relevant maintenance tech. If the maintenance tech is unavailable, the message is automatically escalated and sent to another user. The chain of users in the escalation path differs for every property and changes frequently, so that escalation chain needed to be easily configurable for each property. By using this automated escalation process our client feels that many issues such as property damage and personal injury risks will be resolved &/or contained quicker resulting in faster repairs, less chance of lawsuit and improved rental customer satisfaction.

The solution consists of three parts, an Inbound IVR, for customers to call and leave their message, an outbound IVR, which will make calls according to the defined escalation paths, and finally an internal admin website to configure and maintain escalation paths.

The Inbound IVR will be responsible for recording the customer’s message and saving all
relevant call data to a new SQL record. The data that will be stored will include:

• Caller ID – the number the customer called from.
• Time the call was received.
• Which number the customer called (to determine which property or escalation process
  should be used)
• The recording the customer made (which should include a short description of their
  problem, and a callback number).

The Outbound IVR is responsible for making the calls according to the defined escalation process. It will poll the SQL database for any calls that have been received. When a call is detected, the outbound call is placed. It plays the customer's recording and then presents an option to replay the message. In addition, the maintenance tech will be able to listen to the caller id, or the property name the call is for. If there is no response, the IVR will hang up, wait 5 minutes, and call the number again. If it receives no response on the second call, the IVR will then place a new call to the next number in the escalation list.

The Admin Website is used to manage the escalation process for each property.

• Admins will be able to create ‘contacts’ which will be used when defining the escalation list for properties.
• For each inbound number that is pointed at the Inbound IVR, a list or properties is defined.
• The admin website will also allow users from a specified AD security group to view call records.

Enabling Technologies has developed many CEBP applications for our clients to get the "REAL ROI" from your Unified Communications infrastructure. If a user gets 30 minutes extra a day from increased productivity that is GOOD but if you can significantly decrease your risk of Lawsuit and fix properties before the damage is irreparable - That is BETTER! Talk to your sales representative today about a CEBP app for your organization. To find your sales representative

Lync Spotlight - First Reserve.... A Quick interview with Gregg Westgate, CTO of First Reserve

We recently implemented Lync within First Reserve and asked their Chief Technology Officer about it. First Reserve is a leading investment firm specializing in the energy industry. Throughout its 25-year history, First Reserve has developed an unparalleled franchise by investing exclusively in the energy industry and utilizing its broad base of specialized industry knowledge to the benefit of its portfolio companies and investors.

Question 1 - What drove you to the decision to deploy Lync?

My initial decision to even evaluate Lync as a phone solution at First Reserve came about by the need to provide Business Continuity (BCP) in the event of a local disaster at any of our offices (Houston, Greenwich, or London). The primary goal I was trying to achieve was to implement SIP trunks so that in a disaster scenario I could dynamically swing DID numbers to a functional location for BCP. At first I approached Avaya, who was already the global Telephony provider for First Reserve, and asked them what it would take to upgrade our system from a hardware and software perspective. The resulting sticker shock from this inquiry was the catalyst that resulted in my decision to look at other vendors.

Around this time, Polycom approached me for a roadmap meeting around their products, as FRC uses Polycom for our Video Conferencing needs. During that meeting they introduced me to Microsoft Lync and did some "off the cuff" demonstrations of the functionality. Intrigued I started looking around and found that many of the companies already supporting me were using Lync or OCS internally. I also found out that Microsoft supports SIP trunks natively and did not require third party Session Border Control (SBC) devices that can be extremely expensive and most of the traditional phone systems require SBCs to have a secure environment.

At the end of the day, the vast network of support Microsoft has for the product, the relative inexpensiveness of the product, and the ability to wrap all the licenses into my existing Enterprise Agreement made Microsoft Lync an easy choice. Not only was my implementation cost less than the upgrade cost of Avaya, my annual support costs have also decreased.

Question 2 - What advice would you give to other organizations in a similar situation?

I personally made the decision to not go hybrid with Lync and my pre-existing phone solution. When we went live on Lync we were 100% Lync. As a result we avoided any issues with integration of other phone systems. We also provided customized training in 90 minute sessions across a several week period to help ease the transition and prepare the entire firm for the go live date. Both of these implementation choices helped drive our successful transition to lync as our PBX.

Question 3 - What has been the impact of Lync on your business and/or users?

The largest impact on the business has been reduced cost. The largest impact for my users, is that they have access to their phone and voicemail everywhere in the world. First Reserve truly does have a virtual office that is intuitive to use, and is actually used. In the short time since FRC has gone live, I have received many unsolicited emails from my traveling employees expressing their happiness in the solution. Basically, our phone system is as portable to the end users as email has become. In addition, the voice quality is noticeably better than our Avaya system was.

Questions to think about after your Lync Implementation - Help Desk Support? Managed Services?

Does my team have experience with supporting/managing Lync or OCS for real-time communications (voice/video conf)? Is the system considered mission critical?

How do we plan on monitoring the systems’ health, and who will we call if the system has issues?

If we have Premiere support w/ MSFT, then we can call them for the software, but not for the gateways or user device-related issues.
 

If we don’t have premiere, then we will get 4 hour response times and go into the same queue as consumers (we know from experience, two Enabling engineers worked in the Microsoft UC support queue in Charlotte).

Solution:

Enabling offers proactive and reactive support for all components in the UC chain (servers, software, gateways, devices). We have multiple offers including 8x5 and 24x7 and Managed Services which include all the patches and monitoring etc. etc. on a yearly basis.

Many of our managed services client compared the cost of hiring/staffing/training IT resources to operate the ongoing systems (manage user changes/settings, patch systems, monitor/optimize performance) and found it was more cost effective and easier to just outsource all of it to Enabling. Would you be interested in this type of service to free up your IT staff for their projects rather than the daily communications issues?

Discuss your UC Support Options with us!

Pros and Cons of Prairie Fyre - Contact Center Solution for Lync

Prairie Fyre is our go-to partner for Contact Solutions integration with Microsoft Lync. Here are some recent clients opinions in regards to their implementation of the Call Center solution:

Pros

The system was fairly easy to install and with PrairieFyre's assistance we were up and running in a few days. Once we got our queues configured and the users installed we were done. It is simple and straightforward for the users and we have minimal day to day support issues with them. When there are issues PrairieFyre Support typically has answers within 24 hours.

Cons

Some instability in the early versions of the desktop client. At one stage we were on "patch" release and it was problematic getting the normal release to deploy correctly over the patch release. Over all these were minor issues.

Additional Comments

We did a "forklift" replacement of a 10+ year old phone switch and deployed Microsoft Lync with Prairie Fyre Ignite. The project has been a resounding success and we are looking to extend to additional offices.

Another client's review:

Pros

Ease of deployment, The way it interacts with lync. The reporting.

Cons

There really wasn't anything we actually disliked about the product. However we felt The client could be more stable. But they have released a new more stable client.

Additional Comments

Our company moved from a traditional digital PBX to Microsoft Lync Voice and the prairieFyre Contact Center for Lync for our customer service center. The combination of Lync’s UC capability combined with prairieFyre’s ACD, reporting and real-time management tools has allowed our supervisors and agents to more effectively run our call center operations. Incredibly, the ROI of the Lync-based voice solution versus the leasing costs of our old PBX system was less than three months!

James Santillo, Systems Administrator, Weiss Group LLC

XP out of Support - Sooner than you think!

FYI for your planning purposes… XP is out of support in a little over two years (April 2014).

http://rcpmag.com/blogs/scott-bekker/2011/07/windows-xp-deathwatch-1k-days-to-end-of-life.aspx

Special Deals for Lync Optimized Jabra Endpoints Jabra currently has two special deals running for Lync optimized endpoints: 1. The first offer is targeted towards clients who are currently doing a Proof of Concept and would like to try out a small number of headsets to see which endpoints work the best for their circumstances. If you are trying out the endpoints click here to see the offer: 5 for Free. Be sure to designate "Enabling Technologies" as the Voice Partner so we can make sure you get the endpoints. 2. The second Offer is targeted towards clients who are starting to do production rollouts and are purchasing endpoints for large numbers of users. The Voice in a box offer provides 100 free endpoints if 750 are purchased and 250 free endpoints if 1750 endpoints are purchased. Click here for more information about the Voice in a Box Offer As stated earlier please designate "Enabling Technologies" as your Voice Partner so we can make sure all goes smoothly.

FAQ Corner

Common Question: Our Helpdesk frequently gets asked about this: How to enable CDR (call detail recording) and QOE (quality of experience)?

Answer: To configure Monitoring Server using the Lync Server 2010 Control Panel

1. Using a user account that is a member of the RTCUniversalServerAdmins group (or has equivalent user rights),
   or is assigned to the CSServerAdministrator or CSAdministrator role, log on to any computer that is in the network in which you deployed Lync Server 2010.
2. Open a browser window, and then enter the Admin URL to open the Lync Server Control Panel.
3. Click Monitoring and Archiving and then do the following:

• Click Call Detail Recording, enable or disable call detail recording, and then configure call detail
  recording purging settings as needed.
• Click Quality of Experience Data, enable or disable QoE, and then configure QoE purging settings as
  needed.

To a Prosperous New Year - 2012! Cheers,Ellie