By Dan Baldwin, ICTA Executive Director
2017 Copyright Protected
This challenge is usually faced by an existing single location business that is moving and finds that their existing phone, internet & managed IT services are either in a state of disrepair and not worth moving or the business move is occurring in relation to a change in the way a business operates.
Following is a checklist that any business can use to properly setup an existing business in a new single location for phone, internet & IT managed services.
The answers to these questions help a business create for themselves a vendor neutral solution that can then be "shopped out" to several reputable vendors. If you let a single vendor answer all these checklist items for you they will generally paint you into a corner where only their solution will work.
Following is the general presentation outline. After the outline you'll find a rough script. All this content is copyright protected to ICTA (Information & Communications Technology Association). You you'd like to use it or re-publish it you need to get written permission by sending an email to Dan@ICTA.us.
Internet
1. What Wired (Unmetered) Business Internet is Available?
- Coax or Fiber, No one buys T-1s anymore
- Note smaller upload speeds & local trouble reputation
- Buy one connection each from competing providers if firewall can "shape" traffic
- Manage IP addresses to make future carrier changes easier
2. What Wireless Business Internet is Available for Fail-over?
- AT&T or Verizon 4G or LTE (with static IP?)
- How's the signal strength in computer room? (Antenna signal boost, MoFi routers)
- Exede 5/1 Satellite Redundancy (with persistent IP vs. static)
- Know how much metered overages cost
3. Modems should be in bridge mode
- First do no harm
- Know whether you or carrier & access modem
- Know how to troubleshoot outages & use IPchicken.com
- Use & manage your own modem?
IT Services
1. Need a Firewall with at Least 2 Internet "WAN" Ports
- Primary WAN port for wired
- Secondary WAN for wireless & metered failover (get failover alerts to prevent overcharges)
- Extra WAN port for shaping internet traffic over two providers & separating file transfers from voice/video
- SpectroTel managed FortiGate firewalls by Fortinet
2. Need a Firewall Manager to Maintain WAN Security/Failover, Setup VPN, WiFi & Solve WAN Problems
- Most local LAN techs need internet & WAN to "provably" work to switch
- Don't circumvent firewall with carrier WiFi or accessing extra modem LAN ports
3. Need a Managed POE Switch from WAN Vendor
- Power over Ethernet (POE) reduces need for phone "power bricks"
- Both WAN & LAN techs always blame the customer's switch
- Ensure WAN vendor can prove "everything's working to customer's side of managed switch
- Have a laptop available to do your own testing at switch, firewall & modem
4. Need Managed Guest & Secure WiFi NOT from Internet Carrier Modem
- Don't allow unmanaged access to your WiFi by allowing WiFi from carrier modem
- Have managed IT provider create firewall protected visitor & secure access via APs (access points)
5. Need a List of All Hardware Plugged Into Switch/Patch Panel
- Solving problems involves system isolation meaning unplugging things one by one
- Daisy chains, extra routers & hubs cause problems
- Always remove old gear
6. Need a List of All Software Application Running on LAN
- How latency sensitive is the application?
- Which apps use the most bandwidth and when
- WAN vendors always blame your apps
7. Know What Kind of LAN Cable You Have & Label Runs on Patch Panels
- Transferring 10gig files on old cable & 10/100 switches?
- Have a cable pro spot check certify cable connections
- Daisy chain computers thru VoIP phones?
8. Have a LAN Manager Who Solves Computer Problems Past the Switch
- Printers, servers, backup hard drives
- PC virus protection
- Try & get most apps (email, docs, etc.) from the cloud (Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365, etc.)
9. Separate Electric Circuit, Surge Protection, Battery Backup, No Sprinklers & Computer Rack (for good circulation)
- Don't have your computer gear on the same circuit as your microwave & coffee pot
- Lots of problems are caused by modem & firewall overheating
- Lots of motherboards & hard drives get wrecked by power surges
- Wet electrical gear doesn't work well (raise power strips off the floor)
Phone Numbers, Phones (Desk, Soft & Mobile), Collaboration & Messaging
1. What Happens When Your Main Number is Called?
- Receptionist vs. auto-attendant (AA)
- Which people & departments need a direct number
- Transfer, park, hold & 2 different sets of flashing buttons
2. How Many People Need Phones? Main office, home office, mobile office
- Phone numbers vs. extension numbers vs. 800 numbers vs. fictitious numbers
- Secretaries, bosses & shared extensions
- Transferring to voicemail?
- Taking your office phone home vs. logging into your office phone from home
- Simultaneous ringing
- Softphones & headsets
3. Call Routing - DIDs, Ring Groups, ACDs, Call Centers
- Direct Inward Dial
- One number, multiple phones, separate NA routing
- Automatic Call Distributors & Call Centers
4. Collaboration (audio, video, screen-sharing & recording)
- Who even has an unscheduled call anymore?
- Video elevates seriousness
- Screen-sharing shortens all problems
- If a call is not important enough to record (why are we doing it?)
5. Unified Messaging (Voicemail, transcriptions, IM, SMS)
- Office or cell phone voicemail?
- If it's not worth transcribing it's not worth capturing
- Instant messaging & texting
- Legal archiving
6. Premises vs. Cloud Phone Systems (Copper, PRI & SIP dial tone)
- 20 or more single site employees in a static business rate a PBX look
- Copper & PRI used to be gold audio quality standard
- Everything's going to SIP & the cloud - plan for it
7. Seat vs. Simultaneous Call Pricing
- The most expensive "underlying cost" is simultaneous call volume
- 10:1 ratio of phones to calls
- "Radio Shack" your own phones?
8. 911/e911, eFax & POTs Modems
- Keep a real copper POTS line for "real" 911 & power outage working dial tone
- Know where the 911 operator thinks your VoIP phone is (or prepare to "lawyer up")
- Kill your fax machines for eFax
- Measure the benefits of upgrading your analogue POTS modem gear to IP
9. Fire & burglar alarm lines
- Check your local fire code
- LTE/4G or radio mesh can replace one or both POTS lines often
10. Inbound & outbound outage call rerouting
- Phone carrier needs to preprogram inbound reroutes to outside voicemail
- Do individual DID's need rerouting (not usually with simultaneous ringing)
11. Hot-cut vs. Forward & Port (call path limits)
- Hot swapping phone numbers requires highly confident & experienced carriers
- Forward & port is more flexible but can cause temporary outbound callerID issues
- Porting delays & issues
12. Zombie Old Phone Bills (who kills them?)
- Require an accounting of all invoices before starting
- Audit phone bills every 30 days until dead
- Collect original deposits
13. Business Yellow Page Listings
- Foreign directory listings
- Does anyone even dial 411 anymore
- Google, Bing & Yahoo search your business
By Dan Baldwin, ICTA Executive Director
2017 Copyright Protected
Rough Script:
Those damn Balram And today we're going to talk to you about how to set up phone internet
management services for a single location business. I'm a telecom
consultant and I've been doing this for about 25 years
so I've done this presentation for my own customers
about I don't know a hundred times a thousand times or million times I can remember
anyway. These are the things that you need to know and have on a checklist
to get a vendor neutral solution created.
So kind of go through this checklist with me put down
what works for your business. And then once you have a real understanding
then you can go to someone who can take an order for you where help you
answer more specific questions. But if you don't have this checklist
done what are you going to do is you going to end up talking to a telecom
salesperson and they'll help you answer all the questions and kind of paint you in a
corner where you can only buy their equipment. So understand these options
before you start. You'll have your own vendor neutral solution
kind of fleshed out and then you can go in any direction you want. So we're going to
outline here. That comment takes you through everything you need even though
it's mostly about a lot of people. Most don't know about their phones. That really
starts with your internet because you have to have your Internet connections squared away.
Tasveer new VOIP hosted phones work well. Very few people
are buying phone systems anymore that are based on the old copper phone lines. And so
all the dial tone goes through the Internet see what and make sure that your Internet is squared away.
So we're going to talk about the Internet for a while and then we're going to talk about I.T.
services because I.T. services your
internet only works as well as the I.T. services that support your internet
connection. All right. So a whole lot of your I.T. services these are
used to have people in-house maybe still have people in-house that do all of your I.T.
but hopefully they're specifically working on your business specific
applications and that we're in about so much whether your internet connection is working or
your firewall is working well. So we're going to talk about I.T. services and how
you can get those specific to your business and not have to pay a whole
lot of money for it. And then once we go through these services we're finally
going to get to the telephone because if you have
your Internet connection squared away. If your I.T. services are squared away
then you can get a really cool phone system that does exactly what you want your phone
system to do. All right. So let's go. And again
everything that I'm going to talk to you about today you can do yourself as a business owner. You can
do yourself as an I.T. director or you can contract with someone like
myself who is a telecom consultant telecom agent general partner. We've
got a lot of different names. He made her pay us directly to do this or you
can also this works kind of like a broker or a
real estate broker or we can place the orders through you through
the carrier for you and then that carrier pays us commission. So regardless of how we
get paid we can certainly help you a lot. All right. So let's
go back up to the top.
OK. Your first is your internet. Right now most every business is going to
start out with a single Internet connection. Now it's going to be
a cable co-ax connection or is going to be a fiber
connection either from the cable company or a local phone company.
No one really buys the ones anymore used to be get a Tijuana's 1.5 mags.
But that super super slow down 5 10 years
ago when you know bigger fiber used to come out
people would try to get the biggest single fiber connection in there that connection that they
can get. But what you want to do any more is
probably get two cable connections or two Internet connections or maybe three Internet
connections or one to talk about the pros and cons used to be
just get one big maybe a 10 meg internet connection and then
what you would do is you try to get your firewall to shape
traffic going over that single internet connection. All right. And by the use
of what we call being Lans or virtual local area networks set up through your firewall.
And what that will do is it would separate your big fire to make file
uploads or file downloads from the other traffic latency sensitive tracker
traffic like your voice or video. For those of you who've fooled around with
hosted VoIP services you've probably noticed have someone in your office is
uploading or downloading a huge file. It kind of tends to step on your
voice or your video phone call. So to fix that
we would have to separate the file transfers from the
latency sensitive voice phone calls that can be kind of tricky to do and if you
don't do right now sometimes it seems like you do do it right. It doesn't always
work that well but if what you do is you get one connection
for your file transfers and another connection for your latency
sensitive traffic like voice or video. Then it becomes very
very easy to manage.
I've done this with my own customers get a couple of cheap cable
connections you know one thing I've got customers got 150 by
20 no 50 by 10 connection 50 meg down 10
meg up for their file transfers and another connection I think it's
25 by 5 for their voice works super well.
All right. Now that's one of the things we want to know to you that when you're buying
cable internet specifically it's what we call
a synchronous where the download is always a lot more than the upload
sometimes 20 or five or ten times more.
So a classic speed will be 15 meg down 10 meg up. Now people don't really
realize that the speed is really the most critical speed because
more and more people are uploading files to the Internet and video files to the Internet
whenever you're doing a voice conversation with half of it is upload.
So really when you're buying the co-ax it's pay attention
to the lower upload speed because that's really your limiting speed.
Now if you are now the thing you want to do is you want
to talk to your neighbors wherever you're moving into your business. Find out what the
reputation is for the local internet provider because if that super
stinky you want to know that going in. But generally
you're going to have a choice between cable and or
internet. You might even have fixed wireless if you're in a dense
business location or sometimes even on the outskirts. So ask around
cable is always going to be your first choice.
Fiber from the local phone company and probably your second choice
and fixed wireless. And the way the fixed wireless works is this a wireless
provider and they have you know two dishes that point at each other they usually give
pretty good answer depending on where you are best kind of a boutique you thing.
So ask around find out and then get to those for you
or your main internet connection and these will be what we call a
unmetered where it doesn't matter how much internet you use There's always going to be the same
flat monthly price. All right so now the second type of internet that you're
going to need is what we call the business of wireless business
Internet for failover. OK. Because sooner or later you're
you're you're wired ethernet is going to fail whether it's once a year or once a month
or once a decade I can promise you that when it does fail you're going to hate it. All
right. Well one other thing I wanted to mention that I did manage your
IP addresses carefully. The the
Internet carriers are pretty tricky. The IP addresses that come with your
internet connection they own those. All right. And they unlike your phone numbers they don't let
you port them over. So five years from now or one year from now or
however long from now when you want to switch Internet service providers
they're not going to take those IP addresses. All right you're going to have to change them to whomever
you're switching to. All right. And so that is a huge pain in the butt
as you can well imagine if you have been keeping a careful inventory
of all of your IP addresses. So definitely make sure that you do that.
All right. So if you're up to switch it becomes a lot easier. The customers that I've
had that just they just they can't switch because they haven't kept track of all their
IP addresses and they literally have hundreds of them and trying
to swap them all out is impossible. And so they pay whatever the carrier charges.
Now if you have two wired internet connections what you'll do is you'll
constantly be kind of playing off one against the other
because if you keep in your IP addresses straight you can
swap them from one to the other. But really what you're any of your carriers are going to
look at is let me see that what you're paying for you know equivalent service. So if you
constantly have two Internet connections and your you
know basically Later them compete against each other you're always going to get your
best price.
Now back to the wireless. You want the wireless
because the cable is unmetered. Your
wired internet connection is unmetered. You're always going to pay the same flat
monthly rate no matter how much you get you. All right but it's on the ground.
So sooner or later it's going to break know on a fixed wireless but even fixed wireless
breaks from time to time. So you always want something to fail
over to when the land line internet breaks.
All right. So the things that you're going to want to flip over to is
generally AT&T or Verizon 4G LTE.
It's the same internet data internet they have on your smartphone. OK it works
pretty well.
Now in a business environment especially if they have a VPN or you
have outside locations and engaged with your
office you need a static IP of some sort. All right. Because if you don't
have a static IP on your wireless failover the
other business connections that are trying to get ahold
of you won't be able to find you. All right so if you get
AT&T or rise in 4G or LTE fail over and you don't have a static IP
then it's kind of fail over where you're going to be able to get out into the Internet.
But people that are trying to get into your business won't be able to do that. Now
the other thing you need to notice is the signal strength of that connection.
All right. Now you can figure that out just by taking your your
smartphone either AT&T or Verizon then
going into wherever your computer room is and seeing how many bars you have
because when your firewall fails over to
the wireless that's how many bars you want to have. All right so if you only have one or two
bars in your computer room you're going to be looking at getting an
antenna. Now we've got a couple hyperlinks here spend a
lot of a lot of you have luck with fancy
Sierre a wireless antenna. And then there's more fire routers that
we've had good luck with. So check out that if you know that
seems to make sense. Now what I've used very well is an X C
satellite interconnect connection. Now the reason that I like the
excede internet connection is for two reasons. Number one it comes with a
persistent IP. OK so you don't really need to fool around buying a static IP
that comes with a persistent IP and you can talk to exceed about exactly how that works.
But to put it in for several clients it works very well.
OK once you they don't tell you in advance what the persistent
IP is going to be. But once you turn it on you test it. It delivers your
persistent IP. You write it down and that's what it's going to be for in most cases.
And so people can log in your managed services
provider can log into your firewall what has failed over to the wireless
because they know what a persistent IP is.
Now the other reason that we really like the excede service is because it
solves the antenna problem. Now the excede service it
puts a little tiny like dish on your roof. OK and so you
need the owner of the building's permission to put this on. But
just like when you're putting on DirecTV or whatever dish on your home
you have to put a little dish on your building it points up to a satellite orbiting
overhead. Now 22000 miles or what have you. And then it snakes
a ethernet cable down to your computer room.
Now it's awesome because it's a weather proof you know it works 99
percent of the time. I've got him in and probably a dozen of my
customers businesses and it just always works where for some reason whenever we
fail over to there the 4G you know maybe it works 50
percent of the time but if it doesn't work when you need it to work is not working well enough. So we
strongly encourage using the accedes satellite I know when satellite first came out
you know 10 15 years ago there was a huge latency problem. I'm not saying that
latency problem has been completely resolved but it's nothing like it is to
be if you were ever on satellite internet. You need to try it again because it works out
very well especially if you just get what we call the redundancy
solution where it's just five Megs down one meg up. They give me
one gig of it is pretty much the same price same as 4G.
But you also need to know when it's flipped over because it
does charge you you know 15 bucks a month just like an irregular
regular plan whenever you go for the 1 gig so you don't want it to fail over and then
not know if you're uploading a lot of files.
Now the last thing to really say on Internet connections is your
modems need to be in bridge mode. All right. Because
for you know real grownup businesses even super small one you want
all of the control of your internet connection and your local area network to
go through your firewall. OK. Now I know that a lot of Internet companies business
Internet companies when they give you the modem they'll tell you oh well we're going to give you a.
It comes with a firewall. Well you don't really want to use that one
because quite frankly you're not in control of it really all that much.
Sometimes I'll give you a cordial sometimes they won't. But
anyway be frank here. Your Internet company doesn't care about your firewall. If they
give you a freebie firewall Maybe it works maybe it doesn't. Maybe they know how to set it up.
Maybe they don't. You just don't really want to fool around with it. OK so what you
want to do is you want to get a grown up business firewall from a local
managed services company and have them manage it.
So if something goes wrong it's their fault they got to fix it. All
right. You don't really want the Internet company doing anything but saying hey our
modem is in bridge mode and bridge mode means they don't stop anything.
All right. They just. Everything passes through one way. Everything passes through them. And the other way.
And then the firewall does all of the control. Now you still want it even when you've got it
set up in bridge mode. You want to make sure that the Internet company
can still access the modem because
there's a bunch of lights only about them for your internet. You have to know what is going on
with them because when the Internet goes down you have to look at it figure
out how do you troubleshoot these lets you know when to reboot tomorrow and you just always want to
make sure that it's constantly in bridge mode because if you're a managed service provider
start now trying to solve problems first and they're going to ask you is your modem
still in Bridgeport and say you need to be able to contact the Internet
service provider have them be able to log into it even though it is in bridge mode
and confirm that now. About half of the Internet providers out
there they will allow the customer to log in to their modem because it's connected
to your local or network. You should be able to get the IP address that you type
into Internet browser on your network and be able to access it. You know usually with
a password and you can check some of the settings yourself but the time to get
ready to do all that is not when you have an internet connection outage you want to be able to
test all of that.
Make sure you can access your modems before your
outage. So make sure you ask the questions up front. Will I be able to access it.
Can you put it in bridged mode. And then once you get it installed make
sure either you or your local sir manage services provider or your internet
provider can access that because it's going to become a big deal during your first
Internet outage.
All right. Then the final thing is do you even want to
manage your own modem. This doesn't happen a lot but
in a lot of managed services provider who are either managing your way and or managing your
land will say hey you know we don't even like using the local internet
providers modem they have a very own modem that comes with its own set of
trickiness. So before doing that if your managed services provider is trying to
sell you on the benefit of you know maybe buying a combination
firewall modem you know talk to some of the references make sure that makes
sense because I don't have a lot of customers that do that. All right.
So that's all about the Internet connection on the internet. Everyone is going to
assume that your internet connection is working correctly and so you want to be
able to troubleshoot that yourself right because your
everyone is going to want to blame your net connection. So understand how it works and
does IP check and what that does is it tells you what
what internet connection you're going out of over.
Because if you have a fail over like let's say with
exceed you want to you're going to get a persistent IP address and that will be
different from the normal static IP address that you get from your
internet connection.
One other issue you're going to need at least one static IP address
to address your firewall. OK.
Most internet services providers will give you one the static IP
address for like 15 bucks a month extra and then five or 20.
So for an extra you know five bucks month you get you know four more. So generally
just get five they ask you you're going to use them towards us servers.
All right. So moving on his services now
I.T. services fall into really two categories.
All right you have your way and I.T. services provider and your land
I.T. services provider now united services provider is the person
that you normally think of who makes your computer
connect to the printer and print. I mean really that's mostly what it's all about is more
and more everything is done in the cloud but people still want to have
something. Print your local printer has to do it. In your computer has to be
connected to your printer for that.
Or.
Newquay and you get time clocks you know you just have all
kinds of little computers that are in your office that have to work. They have special
applications and generally your local area network some guy
who can you know drive to your place and fix something. Or more often than
not they'll be local and they'll just log in and they'll fix it. He's a guy that will be making
sure all the computers have some sort of virus protection software. But he does
everything what we call outside on the customer side of the switch.
Now the switch is all of the computers in your office
are most likely going to be connected by cables unless it's all wireless.
But you know most offices they connect their computers
securely to connect cables and then they go back and they go into
what we call a patch panel. And then from the patch panel which is all numbered
you know corresponding to the plates on the wall and in the office so everyone knows what you
know everything is plugged into them from the patch panel it goes into the
switch and then from the switch back to the firewall back to the modem and out
to the Internet. Now the switch is really
usually anymore the line of demarcation. Everything from the
switch on to the Internet is going to be managed by your whan managed
services provider which more often than not is going to be your
Internet carrier hopefully. And then everything on the outside of the switch
onto your applications that's going to be your land managed services provider the
local guy that makes your printer work. OK.
So you want that to be the line of demarcation
because the guy trying to make your printer work he's going to want to blame your internet connection
or blame or firewall or brain your switch
and the Internet provider. What they're going to want to do is they're going to want to blame land
guy. So generally if the Internet
provider stops at your modem they're going to say well it works to the modem and
then your firewall or your switch isn't set up correctly. The
firewall on the switch used to belong to the land managed services provider
because you know it's on premises. But over the past two or
three years the firewall and the switch have really migrated over
to being the responsibility of your Internet service provider. So what I
do with all of my customers is I say look we want to
minimize problems. So what you're going to need to do is your firewall
needs to be managed by your service provider and the switch needs to be
managed by an Internet service provider. And the reason is
is the number one application that people have right now
outside of their switch that they really need help with is
VOIP phones. All right so your VOIP phones your desk phone is going to
plug into your switch and the audio quality that you have on your
phone is going to be highly dependent on how well your
firewall and your switch are managed. So if you want to completely minimize
your problems what you need to do is get your internet your
firewall your switch and all of your VOIP phones from the
same vendor. OK. Just explain how horrid this is.
All right. Because if you get your hosted phones from you know El Cheapo
we do hosted phones and we have bad audio quality. They're going to blame
your switch on your firewall or your internet provider. All right so you just need
one single throat to job. Most of the Internet providers they do
phones and say you just want a single point of responsibility all the
way through. All right. So teach for my sermon.
So let's go into our bullet points. OK.
That the. All right we talked a little. OK so your firewall.
I use Spector as a maintenance services provider that provides Internet
connectivity. They use 7:56 firewall is by for the net. Now
a lot of people say for that you know we know we prefer something else we prefer this. We prefer
that my own personal opinion the most important thing is to
make sure your with somebody who really knows
firewalls all right whether it's for internet for the gate or some other firewall out
there. Just make sure whoever is doing has access to you know a
lot of training. They know what they're doing and then they have super awesome access
to the 40 organization right or whatever firewall organization. All
right. That's what you want. And that works out really well out
of them. They specialize I expect to tell. They specialize in 48. All right so if you don't
like 48 for whatever reason then you probably don't want to go Expect tell
but let them decide. Again they're responsible for.
And and I suspect Attell for Internet firewall
switch Cozad phones they own it all. All right. So they're highly
motivated to get it fixed because what will happen is when you have a single point of
contact that owns it all. Then when there's a problem they pay
to solve the problem. If it takes them one hour to take some 10 hours they're paying
their tax labor.
All right. You're not. You don't want to be in the position where you're paying your local LAN
guy you know $115 an hour to sit and babysit and solve
problems that may or may not be caused by your internet provider. Right.
So now we talked about having a primary
Internet when we say when we're talking about Internet. So your firewall is
going to look at the back of it. All right it's going to say when one went
to and probably for land ports you know four different things a bug into
generally your main internet connection is going to go into one and
then your failover is going to go away too. All right. And what they can
do is that they have four Lamport four usually switch or you know
anything else that goes directly into the firewall. Now good to
48 provider. What they'll do is they can reprogram one of the land ports
to be a port. So we started out with the
30s or 30s for our one of my
customers and I only had one we import and what they were able to do is take our land
for and reprogram it to be when too. So in a perfect world
you're going to actually have three wind ports OK one wired
internet for or downloads one wired internet for late
sensitive applications and then one for the wireless failover.
OK. And so that way can you shaping traffic shaping to go over
when one and. And then you're not ever really going to use the
wireless connection unless one or both of your other Internet
connections the landlines fell over. Right now you
certainly. And you want to make sure your firewall sends you a
alert if you fail over it's wireless. You don't want to not know about it. All right. Because
you only get one gig transfer generally before you start paying that of 10 bucks and want
15 bucks extra for every extra gig that you've ever gotten a surprise cell
phone bill. You know how how upsetting that can be.
All right. Enough about all of that.
Let's move on to number two here.
Now and we've talked about having a firewall manager
because they're going to do all of the set up your security
your content.
You know where the porn gets onto your network or not. They're going to set up your
VPN if you want to be able to log in and access some of your computers or your service while you're
on the road or at home. They'll set up your VPN and you also want them
setting up your wife. We'll talk about don't get the
wife lie through your Internet modem. OK. Because it's generally
unprotected. You don't want your guest or whatever jumping on your
internet connection now outside your firewall. Have all of your wife like
through your firewall with that not just the signal that comes out of the
modem but you want to have it come from access
points you know around your business you know. Yes it does cost extra but it's
the more grown up way to do it. And then you have someone who is totally
in charge of making sure that it's working correctly. Now you can have
the access points put in by your plan
guy you know and they'll plug into the switch or you can have them plug into the
firewall. Just make sure you decide whether your alarm guy is going to do it.
Your internet provider is going to do it more often than not. It's going to be your local
guy. All right. But these are just extra devices. But make sure that
your internet provider and your local and white are working together
to set up protected access to your wife. And generally with that
you're going to want to set up your wife as have two of these SS IDs that you can find
when you know you turn on your wife I. One will be for gas
probably that don't require a password maybe they just have to you know click on
yes I'm not going to do porn. And then you'll have another one for your employees when they bring in their
laptops and they're going to be Usenet access your VPN or something.
All right.
K.
Now one thing that we didn't really talked about your provider is you only have a
checklist from the Internet provider that proves everything
works and the way to do that is when they first deliver the internet
modem the firewall all the way to the switch. They'll be nothing plugged in.
OK. And so the first thing that you can plug in is your own
laptop.
All right you always want to have a laptop on site to plug in to the switch and do some
troubleshooting because there's a lot of acronyms out there DNS
D.H. C.P and all these addressee's acronyms help make
sure that whatever your plug it into your switch your laptop can find the internet
and the Internet can find you know your laptop and Kay managed of
course.
So whenever you have a problem you want to talk to your
Internet service provider. Can you see the firewall. All right.
Can you see my laptop plugged in on the other side of the firewall. Why. Because at some point there's
going to be problems. All right. So if you unplug everything from the switch
number one you'll most likely find the thing that you know is creating the problem on the
customer's side and then OK look. Everything works perfectly when nothing is plugged into it and
then you start plugging things back into it one at a time starting with your laptop you know and
all your other stuff that's why you want to have all of your equipment properly
labeled out in your office space going back to a patch panel
before it plugs into the switch. So you know what. What all right
but be sure you understand where your plan a
service provider understands. How do we prove that the
when provider the modem is in bridge mode onto the firewall properties
set up going to the switch that is working correctly given out a proper
DNS and D.H. C.P. and then everything is working. So have that
before you start pointing fingers at each other tight and don't
circumvent the firewall a lot of times he'll bring in new piece of Garrow I
need internet.
And you say well everything needs to be plugged into the switch. So
then it can go through the firewall go into the
internet modem. Now first thing that happens is you know you run out of
switch space or you've got a 24 port switch and you've got a 20 foot piece of gear
where there's no port. I'm just going to plug it into the firewall. I'm just going to plug it in directly to the internet
modem. I mean. Yeah that'll work if you know there's an emergency and you have to get
something done today. But you know go out and get a bigger switch. They're not that
expensive. All right. Because when you start daisy chaining around
your switch in your firewall you're just going to end up with problems.
All right.
And what else next. And I think you're going to want a managed Pili switch
from your when Bendern up here always stands for power over Internet.
And we have a we switch that means everything that plugs into the switch that needs
power like your internet phone. They're going to get the power from the switch. And you
don't have to have a Wycoff power brick or AC adapter plugged
into every phone. You're really going to like that. If you hate clutter on your desk.
By and we've talked about this a little bit both the the land tax I always want to blame
the customer switch and so all as we said the switch used to come
from the land vendor get it from the Internet provider. It
reduces problems especially when you can all agree that everything works correctly
up to the switch.
We talked about making sure the way in Bendre can prove everything is working to the customer side of the man a
switch in the cart but having a laptop available
came on the scene. We talked about the guest and
secure wife fi.
All right.
It's the list of all the hardware plugged in. All
right. We talked about this a little bit but before I mean the first thing they
land or when providers ask you is how big a switch do you need and
how big a switch do you need. Is everything that has an ethernet cable that you're going to want to plug in to the
switch right now. Certainly most
people know that. You know if you're at your desk and you have you've
only got one Internet cable coming to you from
you know the computer room which you get two or three things that you need to plug in.
So what you do is you get yourself a little hub and then start you know putting in a
whole bunch of stuff. Now you got to keep track of that
because when you start bringing in extra halves or extra hours or what have you you're going
to screw something up. All right so just make sure you have a list of
every single thing that you need that's going to have to be plugged in.
All right.
Because trust me causes a lot of problems I had a customer
that you know they're DHP and the DNS wasn't working correctly
and there's something out there that's giving out extra addresses.
And it turns out it was a router underneath the floorboard plugged into a hub on
their network. You know it cost probably a thousand dollars of labor to
find that problem. All right. And all because over the years you just lose track was plugged into your
network. You always want to remove old gear. All right. And
don't just let end users start Daisy chaining stuff all
together and solving their own problems because it has forgotten how it's done
causes a bigger more expensive problem down the road to know everything that's
plugged in. What it is and why it is as well you need to have a list of all your
software applications running on your local area network. OK which ones are
laten latency sensitive that means you know it has to the immediate immediate
immediate life if you're having a voice conversation. It can't wait. You know
emails can wait. File transfers can wait. You know one minute five minutes it doesn't
really matter. All right. And then know which applications use the
most bandwidth and when. If you're doing a full system backup at
midnight. Probably not a lot of people using your network to do a full system
backup at 9:00 in the morning when you were just getting in to the office. And that's
going to be a problem because you have different applications contending for
the available bandwidth and your vendors are out.
Especially the internet vendors that are always going to want to blame your application. So have a
good list of all the applications because again when you start back them off
to try to solve a problem you need to know what the applications are
so you can back Mark one at a time.
OK.
Next cable cable used to cause a lot of problem but now where you know
get cable or 10 get cable being a standard and more newer buildings is
not so much. But if you're moving into an older building or you're
doing mostly older buildings it comes with cable. You know
the real estate guys oh yes it was awesome. All right
well he doesn't have as awesome or not. So what you want to do is
actually have a cable pro come in and you know match certify every single
rhyme. But you know at least by one or two hours and certify the
runs that are most critical.
All right if you're connecting your internet connection to you know a major server and
asperse to Mabel manage you know 10 gigs or 100 games
or whatever.
Make sure that the critical cable connections in your new space
are certified and Kay and they can put you know testing equipment on both ends and say yes
this is awesome and certainly do the same thing between the computer
room and the boss's office. All right. And spot check it. All right.
Because once problems come up and you all your vendors are going to
blame or cable. All right. So spot check it you know get it certified as
the real estate guy who to use for cable in this building. So just
whatever electrician you want well that's a bad sign all right. Because like the
electricians you know they're they're nice and all but it doesn't mean that they put in
certified cat sexy conditions.
All right. Now we talked a little bit about days training. Now
the daisy chain that is kind of ok to do is
when you're connecting up your VOIP phone in between
your computer and the Internet Jack on the wall
because for most older buildings or older set ups you have the cable
connection either Jack coming out of your while gone
into your computer and your phone is off doing something else. Now when you get your very first voice
phone what you can do is say you don't need to have a cell because your VOIP phone uses the same
ethernet cable connection as your computer does. So what you'll do is you'll just
daisy chain the phone in between
your computer and the on the way that works is your computer will have
one ethernet jack where you plug in you know the Internet or the
the network cable but your VOIP phone will have to have a
little picture of the wall jack and a whole picture of the computer. And
so connect the wall to the phone that has the wall jack and then
connect your computer to the phone to where it has a little.
And that's really the only daisy chain that you're ever going to want to do in your network
the avalanche manager who solves computer problems passed the switch and we
talked about this little bit printers servers backup hard drives your PC
virus and try to get the most of your apps from the cloud.
OK all your e-mail all your docs should be in the cloud. You know
Google Apps Microsoft Office 360. Get them out of your
office. They just create problems.
Right and OK and a little bit more about what's going on in your
computer off your computer room you want to have don't have your computer on
the same circuit as your microwave in a coffee pot. Makes perfect sense but a lot of people they don't
think about that.
All right and when you move them you know have electrician check does this go straight out to the
power or does this. You know what I'm plugging all of my servers in. What
else is on that circuit. Don't have anything on it. Just have a completely separate. All right.
Because whenever your. Microwave goes on and off you don't want that you know causing
surges. All right. And a lot of problems are
created by the modem and the firewall overheating. All right. And the reason that they
have tracks computer rocks is just physically
separate this stuff and have some air circulation. All right almost wherever
your modem is and your firewall is right now. Touch on. OK are they hot. Because
if they are they're not going to perform as well as if they're perfectly cool. So you want to make
sure there is proper air circulation around all your computer gear. All right
motherboards and hard drives. You know when they're smacked by power
surges they get broken. That's it. It's going to wreck your day if you lose a lot of data
because you had a hard drive plugged into it. You know it's not
because it didn't warn you. Make sure that you have surge protection
on your circuits that have that stuff going on. Make sure they have
a battery backup because the way the battery backup works is the power that are
making your computer work is actually coming out of the battery backup. So when you have a surge they
have a sudden power outage. You know the lights go out but your computers are
keep on running because there's still power off of your battery. Much the same
way. You know the laptop is if you unplug the power of your laptop it doesn't go
out because it's actually running off the battery. So you want to make sure you have a nice big
battery that your biggest stuff is plugged
into and intellectually or it doesn't work well. Make sure you don't
have a sprinkler you know right over all of your computers and if you
have power strips plugging stuff in don't have power chips on the
floor and pack them up. So if you have you know a little bit of sledding it
doesn't fry everything. I have one customer that they do have the power strips on the floor but they
cut him in a Tupperware. All right. It's kind of funny. They could just take them up on the wall. But
you know that's what they decided to do.
All right so we've talked about your I.T. or your internet
connection. Right. And then we talked about your I.T.
services. You know you're wanting your land and it services people who want to
make sure the internet connection is working correctly. Your Land
guy is a local guy that shows that make printer work the guy more often than not it's going
to be your Internet service provider. OK and now that we've got
internet and I.T. services are properly working now we can finally
have foreigns the phones. All right. And we're going to talk
about phone numbers phones desk phone softphone mobile phone
collaboration conferencing and and messaging. How do
you get. How do you get your message when you're not there to answer your phone. OK.
Question number one what happens when your main number is called. All
right. Do you have a receptionist you have an auto attendant. What which
people and which departments need a direct number. And then you know do you want to
transfer the people to put them on park put them on hold and most all
VOIP phones they have two sets of flashing numbers. All right. In the old
days you had you know just one set of flashing numbers. Now you got two sets. You need
to know how those flashing buttons work and whether or not you want to have you know
any flashing buttons at all for my customers.
Honestly the more flashing buttons the better because especially if they're older my age
50 years old. I mean you want to look at your phone and kind of intuitively know what's
going on. Now it used to be you know a voice phone with a lot of
extra flashing buttons to let you know the you know the call is coming in on or
who's on their phone was pretty expensive. But any more you
can get you know an IP phone for you know a hundred bucks
150 bucks where it does everything for you it's got you know a zillion buttons
all programmable. So if you think your users are going to need
flashing buttons you know get them flashing back. OK. It solves problems because when
there's a visual cue where where's the call. You know I lost the boss.
You know people are going to be upset. Don't skimp on flashing bands.
All right.
Now before we really talk about you know what happens when your main number
is called You need to know how many people have phones. And is it
going to be a main office phone or a home office phone a mobile office
phone. Some people have dial up phone number. They're trying to get ahold of
someone.
Right now the most important thing to understand about the new
phone systems the phone systems is the difference between a
phone number and then an extension number and an 800
numbers. You know they're kind of like you know rent or phone numbers but you know it's toll free
and then fictitious numbers or numbers that people doubt you know
like plumbers plumbers they might have a different phone
number for every different part of you know the state or whatever region they work in
because they want to seem super local. But all those different numbers they all ring at the same
place. You know some super scheduling place or a sales person.
So but the most important thing to understand is that the phone number and the extension number are
two separate things. All right. And so really an extension
number is generally going to be tied to a single
person's phone. All right. So I have I have extension one on one.
OK. Now I might also have a phone number as pointed out extension 101
but the phone number and extension 1 to 1. They're not they're
not forever locked. Like maybe you may have thought of in the old days because I
can separate the phone number from extension 1 0 and have that phone number ring a different
extension or a arraying.
A what we call a push to get a ticket.
We'll talk about it a bit later.
Or a group extension so I might have extension when 10
actually doesn't ring any phone at all but it rings extension 1 0 1 1 2 1
3 0 1 0 4. OK. So the extensions
are addresses for specific phones and
phone numbers point generally and extensions.
Now the one caveat to that
is there are certain phone systems where what you do
is you actually you take it the extension itself is just
a software signature. I say Dan Baldwin and I'm extensional
101. Now if all the programming for
my extension 101 you know my speed dial is and everything about me
is just software only then I can when I'm in the office
I can log into any phone and make that phone act like extension
101 in K or when I go home or I'm on the
road I might have a spare You know dumb
phone equipment and I log into it and I make it extensional one on
one Burtless say maybe you know my wife says my business partner and
she logs into the same phone but she logs in as extension one or two.
That's one important difference where the actual extension programming can be
separate from you know the piece of plastic itself. Now that's more the
exception to the rule. There are some vendors that do that and actually pretty nice if you're all over the
place you may want to just have your extension be something that you can
program. But most in most
cases the phone itself is going to be hard wired to a
specific extension. All right. And if you want to be able to
take calls when you're away from that piece of plastic sitting on your desk where you're
going to want to do is get what we call simultaneous rain where
when you know a phone number gets dialed and it's normally pointed at a
specific extension that extension will ring on your desk.
But you're also programmed to also ring my cell phone camera your
cell phone will have a different phone number. But let's say that I have got you know several
on four five to five maybe 100 is programmed to ring my extension one on
one but it can simultaneously ring my cell phone in my
home number or you can log on to the cloud and you know make it
ring different stuff kind of almost do it on the fly. Some companies want to do is give it to a
smartphone app where you can you know kind of reprogram that on the fly.
But again the most important thing is phone numbers.
What how many phone numbers D in the UK you need one for
the main business. Do you need one for each individual
employee. Do you need one for your tech support. Do you need
one phone number for you know your sales desk or new inquiries.
Do you need one for your premium customers because it used to be in the old
days you know you'd have to say a single phone number and I would say Bill if you
know your party's extension ballot now you
know if your car from your cell phone you don't want to know call one number and then you know
try to remember that person's extension you know or if you want sales. Press 1
if you want you know customer service press two. All right. You have to imagine
where are these people getting this phone number that you're dialing. All right. So
if it's on a piece of computer software and it says if you
need customer service or technical support you know just have a
number right there that goes directly into the technical support. Q Right you
don't want to have your main phone number on a piece of software where people just want technical
service and have a go to a receptionist or go to an auto attendant and they have to listen to the
thing 800 numbers and direct numbers are super cheap you know. So
get as many as you need and then you know help your customers by
taking that phone number and point it in exactly at the extension where
that ring group where that needs to ring. So for example
say that you're publishing a piece of software and it says for technical
support.
Now this phone number that phone number will most often be pointed
at you don't really want it to go to just a single you know your smartest
hack. All right. Go to be what we call technical support
group where you have extension one 5:0
is pointed at your top you know five techs and so when you get
in the morning you have five techs are responsible for taking those calls
and you just have that one wrong group and then all five phones will ring. When
anybody ever doubts that technical support line and whoever is you know first to pick it up
they pick it up. They take care of the problem. Right now that's what we call kind of a poor man's
you know call center. All right so if you just have a bunch of people that are
responsible for technical support problems just set up a little ring group. Now
the one thing about in-groups is you want to let's say
that it rings you know five people's phones. All right. But if all five of those
people have a voicemail and that people are
calling after hours what how does how does you know a phone call
made to a group extension know which individual voice
is going to pick that up. Well the answer is none of them. If you want to use rim
groups you want to make sure you talk to your vendor to find out.
Well we'll see if nobody answers the call or that goes to ring
group. I don't want it to go to any of the voice mail of the people that are in the ring group.
I wanted to go someplace else. And I had a vendor they
thought oh well you know it's you know they just assumed that someone always
answered that call and it wouldn't default to one of the voicemails and so make sure that
whoever is you know provisioning you're in groups they may
have it programmed to where it this unanswered to go someplace else and not
just one of the voicemails of the extensions and the ringer.
Now one other weird thing that always creates problems
is people who have bosses and secretaries
now in the old days the boss might have a direct number
but the like never answers right. Because he's got a secretary that answers his direct number.
Now the the the it's called a shared
extension and cassoulet shared extension will appear on the boss's
phone middle appear on the secretary's phone and maybe there is even one other
person that backs up the secretary for when she has to go on a bathroom or lunch break.
All right. Now the challenge with Sherrod extensions quite often is there's
only one talk you know on the older phones. And so this is where
I remember us talking about all the flashing lights. So what will happen is if
this is super important you've got a boss and the secretary and the secretaries backup
always have to answer the boss's phone to load them up with some extra bonds and
when the secretary's phone rings they have to visually
know his Someone coin for me.
Or are they calling for the boss. OK. And so if you
pick up the shared extension does it
block that path. So no. If someone else calls the boss while you're
still taking care of the first bosses call will the second one get a busy. Well it
goes to the boss's voicemail or we have a shared line
rollover where it's like Boss line one boss line.
OK and with you put if you knows you're taking the boss
first call and then the second one comes in. Can
you put the first one on hold. Take the second one. And what the boss
see that his line one is on hold and the line 2 is coming in.
When you put it on hold is it the same buttons too or you can just you know come
the boss and say hey you know I've got customer a on your
line one on line too. OK.
Because back in the old days when it was just a big no 10 line rollover
group that's pretty easy. Put them on hold and say hey boss you got you know your wife
on mine too right. The whole line one line to line three. It doesn't work
like that anymore with the VOIP phones. You have if you like that flashing button saying who's
where you have to specifically program the phone to. Don't
assume that the new phones are going to work like your old phones. They don't can't.
Now. The other thing that customers makes them
super crazy is not being able to put a caller on
hold on one line and then pick it up on another line.
OK as we just said you know the old fashioned or hold it doesn't really work
anymore because in the old days you had you know 15 phones in the
office and all of them had line went through line six. All right. So you
can put a caller on hold on line to walk to the other end of the building. That car
is still flashing on line to pick them up. Intercom everyone in the building Hey
boss wherever you are. Pick up line two is your number one customer.
Any more what we do is we call it we put it on Park. OK.
So you're going to want to have a couple of what we call Karch Orbitz on your phone
where you can put a customer on park or put a collar on park
and then whoever is in that part Razon they can have the same flashing
and park button. All right. And this is how we solve the
customer's problem where on their old phone you know the boss had a direct number
and then a direct rollover number and you couldn't really replicate that on the new VOIP
phones. So what we did was we set up a park orbit's where
Kuster the secretary could see the
Sherline extension coming in. And then when she answered it it popped off
that Sherline extension. And then she could put that customer that call her
on a park zone and then the shared line X
tension that was Abbass may number could still be open for another call. Right
so we shared an extension you know group
extensions and then part buttons
how you set them all up is going to largely determine
how you how happy you're going to be with your new phones. All right.
And so make sure that however your phone works now
you show whoever is setting up your system. Every single
thing because they may have to change it around. So functionally works
the same way. But probably in a better way. So and then shows you in
advance how it's going to work. So you don't end up with you know some buyer's remorse.
And when it comes to how your new boy vendor is going
to actually make this all happen for you
they have two sets of software to choose from software set number
one is the software that's in the cloud. All right. Because
you don't have really a PBX in your closet anymore that controls all the brains.
Your other brands are mostly controlled in the cloud because that's
rather most of the programming is the system programming. But how the programming
works on the individual phone. Sometimes that will be in the phone itself.
Sometimes it'll be in the cloud. But by and large most of VOIP
IP vendors they give you this knowledge. If you buy an A C
phone system you have to have an NBC phone sitting on your desk anymore.
If you buy you know a VOIP phone system from you know
spectrum tell us what they'll do is you can buy you know Grand Stream
phones and sit on your desk or park on phones I need to ask her name
different sort of phone and a half of the programming that makes the flashing lights
work will be on the phone and out in the cloud. And
so if you go to your VOIP phone vendor they'll say
oh what different phone do you want. Well that depends on what sort of feature you're trying to make
work. OK. So when you're talking about well I need a shared line
experience where I need you know a car park to work or and
this way or that way or the other way you need to focus on
both the cloud and then the for on the phone which kind of Greenstream
Phonte you have the XP 21:16. You know a 21:17
which model is it. So these are all the different things that are going to come into play
for how happy you want to be with this phone system. All right.
So going back to your receptionist versus auto
attendant. More often than not people are going to have an auto attendant but
only connected to their main number. And these are only for
people who don't know who they're calling. All right. Most
businesses anymore if you have 10 employees you want to have a phone number
directly for those 10 employees. OK. Because if they're doing business
you know with a certain person there's no reason to force that person to go
through the auto attendant. Remember that person's extension and then get it that way
or you know you say well you know have to say if you're current for Betty Press one if your
client for sure. Bob press to you know even that is more work
then you need because over time the people are going to swap out and then you have to
go in and rerecord that. So give all of your employees a direct number.
All right you're going to solve a lot of problems.
Already. Shh.
Transferring to voicemail.
Now the nice thing about giving people their own direct number is you don't really need
to worry about transferring to voicemail. All right. Because what will happen is if they don't
answer that number it will go to voicemail. All right. And a lot to
why bother another and some other employ. OK.
What if the person is calling and super urgent then the person can put in their voicemail.
Hey you know Prez's So if you need an operator or you know
I'll call you back within 10 minutes because you know your e-mail or your voicemail is transcribed.
All right OK we talked about
you know logging in simultaneous ringing. We talked about
that a little bit. Sophonias and headsets. Now
a lot of people that are on the move all the time they're kind of the
big they don't even use a desk phone that much anymore. I mean desk phones are super nice
because when every hour on a conference call it has a longer conference call. This nice to
have a nice desk phone that you
can you know use your hands. You know
it's just got better audio quality than the soft phone a cell phone is where you have a
headset and you plug it into your computer and then you have a little dialer that
you can make calls from. That's our phones are great if you're recording a lot of calls I recorded
a lot of my cause and I use this softphone almost exclusively But I also have a desk phone
on my desk for when I want super audio quality
or you expect to do a lot of threeway column B
history we're calling doesn't work so good on us are fun. You have to have Krieger's softphone for that to work
and a lot of fun benders they generally really specialize in soft and so
soft bones are mostly for call centers where people only do one thing and
they only do a one way Nasaw phone works really well. Headsets if
you have a wireless headset you're going to want to make sure that your
Bendre you tell them what kind of headset you're using. Now what kind of headset you want to
use in the future where there's a Bluetooth whether it's a wired headset whether it's the
U.S. the handset and all of that known
upfront. All right call
routeing. We talked about ring groups called talked about DSD
is dreck and we're down that just means everybody has their own phone number. All
right. A CDS is kind of a little bit about regroups just the poor
poor man's call center where you know
people get to their desk and they sit down from 8 to.
If someone calls technical support you know five different phone drain. All right.
And then if it doesn't get answered then it goes to a technical support of voicemail.
All right. The next level above that is what we call automatic call
distributor where people are actually logging in in case.
The thing about a ring group is you have to go to where the phone is wherever that ringing phone is. You have to have
a human go there. All right. When you have a ACD automatic called
Strober or real you know call center. Generally people can log
in to the call center to take calls and they'll log in from you
know a a cubicle and an actual call center or they might be able to log in
from home. All right. So that's the next level up. Most
hosted boy phone systems and more come with a CD.
The ability to log in anywhere and be able to take calls which is awesome because if you
have people that they need to work from home where they can't work at all you're going to want
to give them access to be able to log in to your call center. You know
from my cell phone or a desk phone at home.
OK we talked about. No answer around him. So
a lot of times once you get your phone system installed every single
number that you've got set up every single extension that you've got set up you
want to want to dial it all right and make sure it is busy
or if it's not answered.
What happens. Right. Because no
answer out in busy routing this going to cause a lot of
confusion. All right. So it's super important that
whoever you're setting up the phone system for you ask them if you're on the phone and
someone else calls. What do you want to have happen if you don't answer the
phone. What do you want. How have happened. If someone is calling your
direct extension what do you want to have happen. If someone was calling your direct phone
number what do you want to have happen because you know your phone will act differently. People
dial it three or four digit extension as opposed to the whole appendage that number that's
pointed at you or extension. All right. And if your extension. It's part of
your direct extension but you're also part of a ring group. You know how do you want it to
act differently if the person is calling the wrong group and not your
direct extension. Do you want your phone to tell you this call is someone
calling the wrong group. Well you know there's four other people party the group so you don't need to
worry about it so much. Do you need to be able to know whether or not the other four people can take the
call. All right. So it's really important with a software defined
sound system. What are the expectations for what's
going to happen for a busy no answer situation
no matter what extension number is dialed because you're going to need to test it.
All right. And the easiest way to test things is with your cell phone. OK so once you
get the phone system all installed does use your phone your cellphone and
start doing test calls. All right. And
you can do it. And the nice thing about the cell phone is that God has a
caller ID. All right. And so that helps you see on your own
phone how it's working. All right. So if you use your cell
phone to call into a call group when that call group comes and
rings that phone doesn't identify itself as a call group or does it
identify itself as you know the caller ID of the cell phone that you're calling from.
So using your cell phone is a great way to test your whole system and you don't want to do
that. And end before you sign off on
this phone system works correctly and you're going to want to do that testing because at some point
down the road someone's going to complain about something. Someone's going to go
and change some software and you need to build a retest it to make sure
what you're trying to fix actually got fixed and whatever they did to fix the one thing
didn't mess something else up. All right enough
about that. Let's go on to a collaboration. All right.
More often than not all your phone calls are like scheduled. OK. You know who even
has an unscheduled call us. You have a call coming in from a customer or a tech
support call and video
super cheap anymore. So you can get a conference bridge.
I use zoomed out us there's others out there like that. I also use Uber
conference extensively too where you can record all your calls. You
can record all your video because you can record them onto your PC
you can record them have them stay on the cloud. Personally what I do is I record them on to
my PC and then I upload them to Google
Drive. OK. And then it gives you a super secure link and then you can share
that link with anybody. And you don't have to pay a lot for extra
storage. But you know you give someone that link and a super secure and only they
can access it depending on how you look at it.
So if a call is important enough to schedule.
Trust me it's important enough to record and video of its
seriousness when you have. You know when you have just a plain ol audio call you know
people you know they're doing other stuff.
They're not really seriously paying attention. But if you can as a video call
which is just as cheap to do with a service like the Xoom not us you know
people get real serious they take you know they know their faces being videoed.
And so they really tune in especially if you're recording the call to super tune
into the call. So I highly recommend record all of your conferences.
Let people know they're being recorded and then publish the recording
so people you know take your time seriously screen sharing
can come with almost all of the conference bridges now because of both Uber.
It comes with a that US and it gets recorded as
well. OK so if like I said if anything is important enough
to get a cough or is important enough to record I wouldn't
get too terribly bogged down in making sure that your hosted VOIP
provider also does recording and or video
screen sharing. Because a lot of times what they'll do is
one of two things. Bill Bill they won't really do it it's not
really what they do super well and so do kind of a half assed manner and you
don't really want half assed when it comes to you know this collaboration.
All right. Or what they'll do is they charge all that extra per seat. Right
which don't really want either. So I strongly recommend if your host
provider doesn't do colourations really well don't worry about it because you know
uber conference zoomed U.S. is super cheap. OK. And
just do it to an outside vendor that kind of goes over your phone
system until such time as you know your hosted boy provider.
You know it's just one more ad on.
All right unified messaging. That is the biggest deal
is when people have their own direct phone number and they have simultaneous arraying where both their office
phone is ringing and their cell phone is ringing. The Senate answered. Does your office
was not pick up. Does your cell phone voicemail pick up did people want two different
voicemails to be Schekman. Do you want just one. The simplest way to solve this is
have your office phone voicemail pick up before your cell phone
does. OK. So people are only calling your cell phone. You know like your wife or
your kids you know when you've got a message on your voicemail hey as my wife or your
kids.
But if it's in any of your business contacts kind it always goes back to your voicemail
because your voicemail from
your business phone picks up first we also want to test
it because you know sometimes your cell phone is ringing and you have to look at your cell phone
is that call coming in from the office or is it you know my wife.
All right. And then if you click you know you can't take the call. Does your office
call us go back to your voicemail for at your desk.
You know that's something that will cause a lot of problems for you want to check out in advance
transcriptions. You know don't take voicemail if it doesn't have a
transcription. All right who has time to listen and
to telemarketing or who has time even to listen to your biggest client drone on and
on and on. All right if it's important enough to take a voicemail make sure your
voicemail does transcription so you can boom. You look at it in your e-mail
you can see the whole gist of it right away and or it goes to your
text or I am an even more important is if all of
your voicemails are transcribed. You know it will be like six months down
the road. Oh geez. Who was it that left me that message or where or when did
that customer leave me that message if everything is transcribed. Then you'll be able to easily
search and go find that message six 12 months down the road
and that you know goes toward legal archiving a lot of businesses they might have. It
might be a requirement that all their messaging is archived. And if this already
transcribed it's going to save you a lot of problems.
Instant messaging and texting. Do your
employees do they need to each other where are you will take a phone
call. A lot of businesses like that lot of businesses you
know they let their customer employees do it over or whatever.
You know I am or texting software they already have. It's better to
do it through your hosted services provider. So just
like when we talked about collaboration. Talk to your host a service provider how do you do. I mean
how do you do texting and can that come to the system and it might be OK to
get it outside the system if they don't do it that way yet but more and more you want
to make sure that your provider can do that sort of instant messaging or
texting. All righty
promises versus cloud phone system. The bottom line is
if you have just a single location and it's under 20
phones get a Klout system OK. It's a lot cheaper if
you have more than 20 phones. It might pay off
to get a premise based system you know kind of like the old system where you have a
computer in your office or it's like you have your own hosted
system but you have the hosted computer in your office instead of the
cloud. For smaller businesses it's really just not worth it. All
right. Because you end up you know as in the next you going to RadioShack your
own phone system. You can get your own hosted VoIP
server get your swim trunks you know Cinderella. But in the
long run after you have your first couple problems you lose a deal over something
that's not really worth it if you do have an I.T. guy in house who just
loves doing that stuff. You got to wonder Am I paying this guy
$70000 a month a year to do whatever. You know
tinkertoy my phones I would shy away from it. Unless
unless you do it yourself and you just just love it you're the business owner. All right.
Copper versus pier II versus dial tone. Sit down.
Now the old days copper and pride. Our town which is based on copper
twisted pair is just the gold standard it was the only way to get a perfect car
and when it costs first came out if you remember avantage in the super early days
they didn't sound very good. OK that's all gone away. All
of the carriers anymore are using said he even if they are telling
you is PR I mean they're mimicking NPR I. If you need a peer I'll
go into your old legacy phone system. They're delivering it to your building site
and then they're converting it to pry. OK. So
five 10 years from now Rockhopper won't even exist because the phone
companies are trying to get out of the copper maintenance business just as quickly as they possibly
can. And I believe they will finally be successful. All right so
everything's going to sit in the cloud. So whether you're still using copper or PRI you need to
consider replan for your migration to it because it's going to happen.
All right so once you get into hosted VoIP
pricing though are you paying by the seat or are you
paying by the simultaneous call. All right. Because
the actual only underlying cost for your provider is the
simultaneous call volume. All right if you've got
30 people in your office all have access to a phone.
How often do. How many of them are ever on a
call at the same time.
The biggest busiest day of the busiest month of the year. OK. A lot of my
customers. I mean they're mostly E-M e-mailing each other or what have you.
They're just not on the phone that much. OK. So there might be a 10 to 1 ratio. They have one
simultaneous phone call for every 10 phones. OK. So most of
the host of VoIP providers they have a portal that you know
six eight months into it. They'll show you how many you know how many
simultaneous calls do you ever get up to. Right. And that is really the most hard
cost that they have. And so the two ways to buy.
Boy phone systems is what are you going to pay X dollars a month for every
simultaneous call and then you just stack up all of the phones are
super cheap because people hardly ever use the phones or what they'll do is they'll say they're
not giving you a simultaneous call price what they're doing is they're giving you a seat.
Price is X dollars per month for every seat regardless of the
number of simultaneous calls. Well when they do that they're just
blending it. All right. So they probably know you know 10 to
one five to one. They're kind of architecting
that themselves. So you probably want to have a job.
Most businesses will do this though to start with a fixed rate
Pursey because they don't know how many simultaneous calls that they're going to have.
All right. They just don't know it but they know how many phones they need. Right. So
get a phone where I we need it. You know get your most reasonable price for all
these phones.
But then they have say. But if six months down the road you know
my simultaneous calls are a lot lower than I expect be able to
switch over to some tennis car price. Right.
Though probably if you know them about that up front. They'll
probably give you the best seat price you know because they kind of know where it's all
going to go. All right. And that way you will be able to get you know your best price overall.
Sheesh. All right.
Now the most important reason to do your own tinkertoy
RadioShack phone system is because of the legal requirements for nine one one.
OK. It For whatever reason one of your employees has to
call 911 the 911 operator needs to know. The
physical address that they're calling from. OK. I've got a clan right
now that you know they're being sued because a bad thing
happened when nine when it didn't work correctly. All right. So make
sure whatever phone system you're getting into that when someone calls
911 one the operator gets the right phone number
not the right phone number the right address. OK. And for big
campus environments. OK let's say that you have a small
school where you have a business where all of your phones are spread over five
or six different buildings. All right if someone calls 911 one line
which phone which building which office in which building.
That's the sort of information that needs to get pushed out. All right. And you need to
understand am I going to encourage some sort of a legal liability. I mean if you have an
active shooter and building number A and they call
911 Lyon does it tell them that it's you know the kitchen in
building a. Or does it just say one of these one of the officers and one of these six
buildings.
All right there is a way for this to be squared away. Make sure that you
know how that's going to be done with any phone provider that you're engaged with.
Fax machines unless I don't even other than some doctor's
offices I don't know businesses that are having to fax anymore. All right. There's really
no point in maintaining a super expensive fax machine and having a pot slam
that you're paying anywhere from 50 to 100 a month for
faxes.
Right. Just get effects and get rid of all of your fax machines.
Right. The fax is not that difficult to use. You don't need to get it from your host VOIP
provider you can get it from an effects provider. So you get a good rate because not a
lot of hosting providers even do. COX.
All right. And then.
But a lot of people they went to old fashioned copper pots line because they've got some
old analog piece of gear
that takes a POTS line to work kind of like you know a fire alarm or a burglar alarm or
whatever that whoever that provider is contact them and say hey can we
upgrade this to an IP to interface so it
will work off of internet instead of just the pots line.
Now the problem con is a lot of time a POTS
line. If the power goes out the pots line still has dial tone on it
and is the analog device that you're working on. If
it's going into a modem or there's no power it's probably going to die. But if you have it on
a battery backup and the supercritical then maybe you need that parceling.
But find out what are your options.
Now it's talking about burglar and fire alarms a lot of
them can work off of 4G LTE or a
radio mesh network that most likely not go down. If you just
lose power in your building. OK. Check your local fire codes. A lot
of people have you know specific ideas let alone small townships have
specific ideas where you absolutely need two pots lines when are we getting away from that. And if you
don't have it and you're out and your fire burn or your building burns down then maybe
your insurance won't cover it. So generally check with your local fire
code first. But if your local fire code lets you put in
one or both blinds for your burglar furler or as
LTE 4G or radio mash you can save money that way.
Inbound and outbound call routing. Now
if if you got hosted VOIP phone service you've
already kind of told your phone company what you want to
have happen if you lose power to your building.
Generally that call comes in to the host of VoIP providers cloud. And if
all the power is out it kind of knows where to send it if everyone's got a DEA
ID number and the phone isn't working it will just go to whatever voicemail you have
program but you want to preplan that in advance.
OK. So you know if there's a snowstorm or whatever you know people can
go on the portal and they can rewrite their own calls now have all my calls go to my cell phone
or my cell phone you know work in wherever. OK
outbound calls. You know people are generally going to use their cell phone. But one
thing is super critical that when people are
making outbound calls to your sales people you probably don't want it to be
from their cell phones because if they then go to work for a competitor you don't or
are your best customers having the phone number that they're using Go to your
salesperson. That just left. There is a way through hosted phone systems where
even if they're calling from their cell phone the caller ID that goes
out to your biggest customer. Looks to be you know your ABC widgets
phone number and it might be even the ABC which just direct phone number for that sales person.
But then if the sales person quits or gets fired you know you still own
that ABC widgets phone number and so when you replace that
salesperson all of those calls will go to the new sales person and that
the cell phone number of the personal cell phone number of the sales person that laughed. So
that's important to make sure you talk to your host provider so that that's
that person using their cell phone is using you know a
soft phone or app on their phone that turns the outgoing
call into your ABC which is phone number go
to All right next is
heart cut and forward in court. Now when you're
going from the old phone system to a new phone system the
problem is you're going to want to keep Probably your old phone number because it's like published
everywhere right. So hot swapping is where you
know your 3:53 4:55 any 100. It works in
your old phone. And now at 10 o'clock in the morning or at midnight when every
one I switch it over has to work and the new phone system is quite the same as when
you take your cell phone into you know Brize or AT&T
or to get a different phone. They basically have to port the number on your old phone and put
it into your new phone. Now this works pretty well as cell phones especially if it's just Brize
in the horizon or AT&T to AT&T. But you know if you're switching from
Brize and AT&T It takes a little bit more problematic because the carriers don't like
to use those customers.
The same thing when you're going from an old phone system to a new phone system and you're all hot
swapping or doing a hot cut everything
go wrong.
All right. You want to do it at 10 o'clock in the morning and is supposed to be done by 11:00
and then you know you call AT&T and they didn't get the paperwork and nothing's
ready and they're going to be a nightmare.
You know in worst cases your dial tone can just go down completely or why they're in the
process of swapping it over. People call it the number says it's been disconnected.
All right so if you're going to do a hot swap you need to make
sure that you're working with highly confident and highly experienced carriers and they know
who you're going from who you're going to and oh yes don't worry we've done this slots
and hardly ever goes bad. All right. The foreign import is easier to do it.
Well what happens is you just get 49 year old about town and you basically put an all new
phone numbers. All right. And then what happens is if you want your card over to happen at 10
o'clock in the morning just at 10 o'clock in the morning and you for your old number to your new
number. And then boom you're done. All
right. Now the challenges. And then you can port the old number
to the new number. But when you make an outbound calls the
caller ID is going to be that knew about a number that you get. Now once this ported over you can
swap out the new temporary number for the old number and the caller ID will be
resolved. But these are things that you need to talk about up
front and then the other thing is if in super old phone
systems or old phone companies when they call for your your old
main number to your new main number there might be a limit in the number of call paths.
So if they call that they call forward one that someone else
calls child number where that path is still occupied you know getting a busy signal.
So not so much anymore. But if you're you know out in the country and you have been your carrier is
using old phone gear he can have a call path
limit. All right come in to the end here.
Zombie old phone bills right. If you do a hot
swap what will happen is when you're moving the phone
number you'll take it off the old bill. It it'll go under the new bill but if you're
forwarding and porting or you forwarding and you forget the port
you'll end up with old phone bills. They just never get cancelled and then you're paying for
two phone services your new one and then your old one this not being he is still getting billed.
So make sure that you require an oddity you require an accounting
of all invoices before you start understand how you're going to
get rid of your old phone bills because your new phone Skinstad
up. How do you retire the old phones. All right. And then you need to audit those
old phone bills every 30 days until they are all dead. And if nobody is
doing this I guarantee you 12 months from now people are saying what are we still paying
these old phone bills for. And then you pay them all. You're not going to get that money back. And
someone's going to get in trouble. And also don't forget when you get news
when you've got new service on that phone service 10 years ago you put down a
deposit. All right. If there's a big deposit you want to make sure you get that deposit
money back. All right. And then finally a yellow page away
page listings. I don't even know
people who dial for one one anymore but if that's a big deal for your boss
what you want to do is if you get a host of VOIP service and the most host of web
companies you know they don't even worry about Krekar listens anymore. All right but
if that's a big deal you want to pick up a landline and dial
401. And and you know say I want ABC widgets
in Temecula California you need to have a directory
listing somehow.
Now generally if you support phone company and do it for you you're going to have to
contact whoever is the official Mombo carrier
wherever you are and request a foreign directory listing to where
you know your phone numbers come into VOIP phone company and then they will list it
for 400 on line in whatever town that you're calling from. Right. But
the most important thing to do is I mean I have a lot of customers that worry about their phone one listens
anymore but they do spend time worrying about if people Google them buying them or
Yahoo search them does the right phone number come up. All right. So spend a
lot of time googling the different parts of your business. You know
if there if you have a lot of people Googling you know tech support for you know
ABC widgets there's the special number that you have for tech support show up.
OK. Now a lot of I was outside the realm of your
host phone company. But if you're a host of work phone company or your telecom
consultant is really hot. Then they'll talk to you about all of your
options there. So we've talked about phones
we've talked about I.T. services we've talked about Internet. These are all the things that
you need to know in order to set up a phone Internet. And he managed
services for a single location business multi-location businesses
not a whole lot different than what we've talked about here.
We'll talk about that in a future video but if you have any questions or
any of this do contact your local telecom professional
or you know just get more help and good luck.
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