CatalystTech

In later releases of IP Office firmware more control has been given to the timing of activities with in a hunt group.  The main timers on the Hunt Group tab control where the call rings and for how long.   Lets review these three timers as they operate in 4.2 firmware.

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Well it’s that time of year. Time to relax, watch some football, eat some holiday treats, spend time with family and friends, and learn all about those new gadgets you’ll get from Santa.

From all of us here in Catalyst Tech support, Merry Christmas.  Catalyst Tech Support will be closed Thursday Dec 25th and Friday Dec 26th, see you all on Monday.

The IP500 control unit uses the integral smartcard for licensing functions of the system.  The smartcard is much improved in the implementation over the previous methods of remote Feature Key Dongles installed on servers or PCs.  The only gotcha, the card must be present in order for the system to boot.

This can come as a suprise to the un-suspecting technician on site with a spare control unit, or to the bench tech that is prebuilding a system.  The solution: buy a spare.  The Smartcard (700417470) retails for around $20 and can save time, and act as a test should a control unit not boot with an existing card.  The card shouldn’t need any licenses attached as it would never be placed into production expect an emergency replacement.

IP Office has multiple voicemail options each with different mailbox options.  There is Voicemail Pro, the full featured, fully customizable, server based voicemail.  Voicemail Pro has two interface options or modes: IP Office mode, or Intuity mode.  Intuity mode is the more familiar interface that is derived from the Intuity Audix days, and is used on most voicemail systems.  IP Office mode mimics the smaller Embedded Voicemail and Voicemail Lite options.  Embedded Voicemail, the internal compact flash based solution, uses the simplified IP Office mode style prompts, but is even more simplified.  Voicemail lite, is free, voicemail only, and uses the IP Office prompts.  Below are user guides to each systems interface.

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The Polycom (formerly Spectralink) 8020 and 8030 WiFi Phones (a.k.a Avaya 3641 and 3645) are ruggedized.  Just how ruggedized are they?  Are we talking Hummer tough or Geo Tracker tough?  Below are a few videos from the guys over at Polycom showing just how tough the phones are in several sceanrios you may encounter on a daily basis, or not.

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The smallest of the value edition 1600 series phones is the 1603.  This phone is a bit unique in that it does not support PoE internally. It requires an adapter or splitter.  The phone can be powered by either by the 5V power adapter that connects to a 110V AC outlet (700451230) or via PoE with the additional PoE splitter (700415607). The small PoE splitter still maintains the Class 2 power rating of the 1603 phone and connects to the same plug as the 5V AC adapter.  Read more for references…

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IP Phone documentation is a bit scattered, and in some instances can be hard to locate.  Below is a set of links to some known documentation on different series IP Phones.  If you have additional resources on Avaya IP Phones feel free to post links in the comments section.

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The new 1600 series phones are a value version of the 9600 series phones.  The phones are different from the 4600 based phones that have been used in the past.  The first difference is that the phones use the SSON (Site Specific Option Number) 272 in DHCP to set the options for the phone.  The second difference deals with how the phone firmware is updated.

Traditionally phones contacted a server via TFTP to download firmware and settings files.  The 1600 and 9600 series phones use HTTP.  This offers several advantages and makes administration a bit more main stream.  Here are a few options for the HTTP server required for these phones.

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There is a new blog for the Catalyst ConfigTool. This blog is for pre-sales help with the Catalyst ConfigTool and manufacturing partners that are in the Catalyst ConfigTool. Going forward the ConfigTool blog will house documentation, tips, troubleshooting and other articles. You can also provide feedback and suggestions for the ConfigTool.

Visit the Catalyst ConfigTool blog at http://scscblogs.com/configtool

MultiTech recently announced it’s latest product to help with the mobile office environment, the SIP-to-Cellular gateway.  Only offered as a GSM product, the device can provide up to two trunks of Cellular service to any SIP compliant PBX. With devices like this the possibilities are endless.  Start with simple mobile office environments.

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