Mitel Archives - Connecticut Communications

Authorized Mitel Dealer – Connecticut Communications

A few months ago, Connecticut Communications became an authorized Mitel phone system dealer. Our ten (10) technicians are ready to service your existing Mitel communications system!

Mitel MiVoice Office 250

In today’s business environment, effective communication with customers, partners and suppliers is critical. Mitel MiVoice Office 250 (formerly Mitel 5000 Communications Platform (CP)) simplifies communications, enhances customer service, employee productivity and collaboration while reducing the overall telephony costs.

MiVoice Office 250 enables small and medium sized businesses to blend their voice system into their data network, creating a cost-effective, efficient communications environment. It delivers a hybrid digital / IP communications platform, MiVoice Office 250 allows businesses to network geographically-dispersed employees and locations, whether they are connecting offices and applications together over a data network, or deploying digital and IP phones to on-site employees.

MiVoice Office 250 is built on a scalable software and hardware platform that efficiently combines the best of both data networking and TDM switching architectures. Delivering support for digital telephones natively, in addition to out-of-the-box IP networking. MiVoice Office 250 is designed to help scale and protect your investment with add-on modules and processors in a form factor that is optimized for shelf-top, rack-mount, and wall-mount scenarios. The communication platform may be networked with an existing Inter-Tel® Axxess® communications system, offering backwards migration compatibility and expansion of IP networking. MiVoice Office 250 is expandable to support up to 250 users and multiple sites.

MiVoice Office 250 ensures small and medium sized businesses are more flexible and responsive. Through a complete suite of out-of-the-box business productivity applications, your business will benefit from reduced costs and enhanced staff productivity. MiVoice Office 250 delivers as standard applications including: Unified Voice Messaging with Automated Attendant, Meet-Me Conferencing, Automatic Call Distribution, Hot Desking, Twinning, Mobile Hand-Off, Teleworking and Reporting.

Mitel 5000 is now MiVoice Office 250

Mitel is now shipping MiVoice Office 250 with complete state of out-of-the-box business productivity applications. Mitel MiVoice Office 250 delivers standard applications including: Unified Voice Messaging with Automated Attendant, Meet-Me-Conferencing, Automatic Call Distribution, Hot Desking, Twinning, Mobile Hand-Off, Teleworking and Reporting.

In addition, the MiVoice Office 250 supports a range of advanced Unified Communications appllicaitons via Mitel MiCollab and Mitel MiCollab Client.

For service on your existing Mitel 5000 or to determine if MiVoice Office 250 is a good fit for your company and how much you can save, contact Connecticut Communications – your authorizedPARTNER for Mitel.

Mitel MiVoice Office 250 Attendant Console

The Mitel MiVoice Office 250 Attendant Console offers seamless integration between your computer and telephone. User-pogrammable function keys and short-cut buttons allow for easy one-touch feature operation. Dramatically increase productivity and efficiency with hot dialing for faster calls and transfers. Caller Name, Information and History screen pop yields a better customer service experience.

For more detailed description of the MiVoice Office 250 Attenant console click Mitel MiVoice-Office-250-Attendant-Console-Brochure

5 Ways to Improve Business Communication

Does your business agility need a boost?

Most organizations are familiar with the principle of distributing IT systems to minimize IT service failures. Fewer organizations give adequate thought to maximizing the availability of their most valuable asset, human resource! By distributing both, organizations can eliminate single points of failure and survive a wide variety of threats. Here are 5 ways you can improve business continuity by relocating or distributing your workforce.

1. Relocate your employees to alternate locations

Empty desks are a sign that work is changing. How often do you look across your office and see half the desks are empty? On any given day, individuals may be working at another office, working at home or meeting with customers and suppliers. We no longer rely on tangible objects such as paper diaries or filing cabinets, anything and everything is accessible online.

2. Use homeworking as part of your plan

Imagine if your organization had an office for every employee. Denial of access at any one location would only affect one employee. Homeworking embraces this principle by securely extending an individual’s desktop over a broadband network into their home. Individuals have access to communications, business applications and data just as they would in the office.

3. Improve availability with mobile

Integrate mobile devices into your enterprise communications. Unified Communications enables mobile devices to be integrated into an enterprise communication solution. ‘Single Number Reach’ allows individuals to be contacted via a single enterprise directory number on any device that can be directly dialed. When disaster strikes, individuals can choose to answer their calls on their smartphone or tablet.

4. Create a disaster recovery site

In the event of denial of access to a building or metropolitan area, your key workers can relocate to a disaster recovery site. Mission critical organizations commonly deployed disaster recovery sites in the 80’s and 90’s. These facilities were largely the domain of larger enterprises that placed a high priority on business continuity, for example government organizations and investment banks.

5. Distribute your contact center

For many organizations, the contact center will define success or failure in a crisis. Until recently, most contact centers were single site solutions. Agents travelled to the contact center, logged in and completed their days work in a fixed office location. Today, contact center agents can work at another office, at home or from a mobile device. And there is no impact on reporting either. Real time and historical reporting is centralized and available from ‘anywhere’. Consequently, organizations can apply the same business continuity principles to a contact center agent as any other key employee.

Contact Connecticut Communications for information on improving your business communications. We represent the best unified communications companies in the world with NEC, Mitel and Star2Star Communications. Visit our website www.ctcom.com or call us 203.985.1000.

Connecticut Communications Newsletter January 2017

This month’s newsletter talks about phone technology. Most people don’t realize that their business phone system adopts technology just as fast as their smartphones…yet few companies change their phone system, why?

Technology

Is this your cell phone?

This flip phone was introduced in 1996. This Motorola StarTAC was state of the art and everyone wanted one.

I’m willing to guess you have upgraded your cell phone since then, but why? It sill worked?

New cell phones offer new technology, you say? Then how come you haven’t upgraded your phone system since then? Great new phone system technology has emerged and you are not benefiting from them.

So, if you still have the handset above…give us a call, we can discuss what you have been missing.

Maintenance

We guarantee two (2) hour response time for a system failure.

Wireless Headset

These headsets are very comfortable, our customers love them!

Video Surveillance

Keep an eye on your facility, install video surveillance today!

5 Ways to Improve Business Continuity

Does your business agility need a boost?

1. Relocate your employees to alternate locations

2. Use homeworking as part of your plan

3. Improve availability with mobile

4. Create a disaster recovery site

5. Distribute your contact center

To go more in-depth, watch the full video >

Mitel One Number Find Me

Mitel Dynamic Extension

Mitel’s Dynamic Extension solution allows users to select up to eight different devices or numbers to act as their answer point. By grouping multiple devices together under the same user number, all of their phone numbers are effectively collapsed into one, so callers can reach users regardless of which number they call.

In the past being away from your desk meant missing calls, having multiple numbers, and wasting time playing phone tag with frustrated colleagues and customers.

Today, you may even experience the complete opposite, too many phones and devices.What if you could have one number that will reach you wherever you’re working? Mitel’s Dynamic Extension takes any device with a direct key dialable number, such as your work mobile, your laptop softphone, your home working landline, or your hotel room telephone and adds it to your personal ring group.

So when a colleague or customer dials your office number, all of the devices in your personal ring group will respond. On answering any device in the ring group, all grouped devices will stop ringing. Seamless hand off allows calls to be transferred to any other device in the ring group without the need to end the call or place the caller on hold. So if you need to leave the office, you can take the call with you.

Simple key codes allow corporate network functionality on non-Mitel handsets allowing you to transfer calls, retrieve voicemail, and take part in conference calls from any telephone. Outgoing calls from within your personal ring group will be identified by your single direct dial number. One number, one voice mailbox, and all your calls delivered direct with Mitel’s Dynamic Extension.

No matter where you’re working, your customers will know where to find you. Not only that, but Dynamic Extension can be added to any Legacy Phone System via the Mitel Legacy Rescue Solution. Delivering mobility to even the most limited infrastructures.

The End Is Near for Your Legacy Phone System, Are You Ready?

Recently, the Federal Communications Commission announced new rules for the transition of traditional phone networks to IP-based communication. The transition itself has been ongoing for the past several years and is intended to move our communications away from outdated legacy copper. It is a clear vote in favor of faster, better communication systems for all.

Change is slow, however. Rather than a flood of movement to IP, as some predicted, many businesses have opted to keep their old public switched telephone network (PSTN) systems simply because they work. They keep business moving, and customers and employees communicating. While the demand for PSTN phones is decreasing, nearly 50 percent of all endpoints are still digital—despite the fact that manufacturers have been decreasing their levels of support for PSTM systems for the past five years or longer.

Chances are your enterprise PSTN system is nearing end-of-life, if the end hasn’t already arrived. Many manufacturers have by now issued end-of-support notices, or will be soon, which means that you’re out of luck if you need service for your phone system. As telephony providers continue to chop away at support, spare parts will become increasingly difficult to find, additional gateways nonexistent, and bug fixes, upgrades, and patches things of the past. In the event of an outage, the manufacturer will not be stepping in to help. Should your communication system run into a problem, how would your organization fare?

If you’re like most enterprises, you don’t want to find out.

Embrace The Upgrade

The good news is that you have a clear opportunity to move your business forward. Whether you’re in a situation where your PSTN system, or maybe even an older VoIP system, is losing support, it’s the perfect time to adopt a robust unified communications (UC) strategy. You’ve waited long enough—UC has gone beyond the hype and is proving to be a major asset to companies of all sizes.

Trading in your old system for a Star2Star Scalable Cloud Communications Solution is about more than just replacing one commodity with another. Our cloud communications tools change the game completely. Our services and features—like texting, videoconferencing, and easy faxing—enable smoother workflows and greater productivity. They also fit naturally into today’s changing workplace. You can bring all your remote workers together with one easy-to-manage system, whether they’re using a traditional phone or their own mobile phone.

Other compelling reasons to switch:

A system designed for you: Our support team members are trained to work closely with customers to design a UC system that works for your business—not one that’s bundled or prepackaged.
Easy transition: If you’d like to keep your existing phone number, we’ll connect it to your new Star2Star cloud phone system. We can also emulate most of the functionality of your previous phones to make the switch easy for employees.
Simple installation: We carefully plan out installs in advance to make sure everything goes smoothly. Our nationwide network of partners will install your new Star2Star system alongside your existing telephone system. You use the new system to place outbound calls while inbound calls continue to arrive on the old system until the transition is complete.
Ongoing support: We provide continual support even after installation so if anything goes wrong we’re there to help. Our system is easy to manage so you may choose to have your own IT department do it. We can also manage many aspects of the system for you remotely.
Business continuity: We guarantee 99.999 percent uptime reliability, and keep the system up and running in the event of an outage thanks to our rich suite of advanced disaster avoidance and recovery protections.

Be proactive and avoid the stress of an end-of-support notice. Contact Connecticut Communications for a free consultation 203.985.1001.

Premised Based vs. Hosted Phone System

Every company wants to know what is better for their organization, a premised based PBX or a hosted PBX phone system? The answer might depend upon how you answer these questions.

1) A – Do you purchase a new phone system every 5 years?

B – or every 10-15 years?

2) A – Do you have an internet circuit that guarantees at least 10MB of bandwidth in BOTH directions?

B – or less?

3) A – Do you have CAT5e cable or higher at each phone location?

B – or older CAT3 voice cable?

4) A – Do you use/want every unified communications feature?

B – or you just want the basic PBX features?

5) A – Do you have multiple office locations?

B – or one location?

If you answered ‘A’ to three or more questions you favor a hosted phone system. If you answered ‘B’ for three or more questions you favor a premised based phone system.

We offer two (2) premised based phone systems and four (4) hosted phone systems. Contact us to for a free consultation to see which one is right for you. We sell/install nationwide, give us a call 800-275-7777.

Ten Attibutes of a World-Class Cloud Provider

It doesn’t take much to become a “service provider” providing a sub‐par cloud communications experience. For example, a vendor can pair open source software with commodity off‐the‐shelf servers and partner with a third‐party session initiation protocol (SIP) provider, and voilà! There’s a new kid on the block offering cheap voice services “in the cloud.”

However, any cloud communications system is only as good as the ongoing end‐to‐end services that it provides to its customers. In addition to the foundational software, there are data center operations, staffing, design, scalability, customer service, and much more to evaluate. In this chapter, we’ll look at ten key communications capabilities that you need to consider when evaluating cloud communications providers for your organization

Cloud-based voice and telephony

Voice is, of course, a basic requirement of any cloud communications solution. In addition to providing end‐to‐end voice quality, a cloud communications provider should offer a variety of endpoint options, including software and mobile agents, as well as various desk phones. Functionality should include a personal communications dashboard with advanced unified communications (UC) and voice features, like:

Presence: Know whether people are available, away from their desk, or out of the office and choose the best mode to reach them.
Instant messaging: Look for the answer to a quick question, or, busy on the phone, get what you need with a simple chat to your colleagues.
Unified messaging: Access call recording and send voicemails to your email so you never miss a message. Add fax to email functionality as an optional feature.
Soft clients: Workers enjoy the same intuitive communications management they would experience in the office from a remote PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone, with an embedded, software-based IP phone.
Attendant console: Offer phone status information for multitasking attendants, receptionists and administrators.
Web access: Get access to key collaboration features from remote locations using any computer with Internet access.
Single number reach: Your personal cell number stays personal. The single number reach allows users to be reached on any device through a single phone number with intelligent call routing capabilities. Calling the single number rings one, some or all devices simultaneously depending on user preference and defined rules.

Cloud-enabled conferencing

Modern conferencing makes it possible for remote workers to be remote, with collaboration capabilities that go well beyond a basic conference call. Sharing screens, seeing other conference participants, working on content together in real‐time and more, are all important capabilities.

Conferencing capabilities in a cloud communications solution are a must. These capabilities should be as easy-to-use as picking up a phone and should include advanced features that make it simple for users to invite meeting attendees, dial out, join conferences, share workspaces and record meetings.

Cloud workstream messaging

Work, and especially team‐based activity, is not static, but a continuous process that involves collaborating to solve a problem, measuring results and improving the output, whether it’s speed to market, quality of service or return on investment.

That workflow is a steady stream with faster currents in some portions of the project and slower demands in others. Like a stream, it meanders its way with an inconsistent ebb and flow of people, conversations, collaboration, and content.

Workstream messaging embraces this natural workflow continuity and provides a single, unified experience with rich collaboration and real‐time communications to support how real teamwork is achieved today:

Keep pervasive chats, collaboration and content (like presentations, pdfs, and more) so that new team members can get caught up quickly.
Keep up with projects, stay connected with colleagues and clients, and eliminate cumbersome emails with powerful layers of embedded collaboration within a single, shared application.
Consolidate teamwork capabilities into a single window pane, centralizing chats, content sharing, collaborative whiteboard sessions, pictures, videos, presentations, and add rich graphic and vocal annotations.
Conduct face‐to‐face meetings with team members even if you aren’t in the same room with them using multiparty video integration.
Expand teams past the physical confines of your own organization to include remote employees, contractors and even partner or customer contacts, anywhere around the globe and on any device.

Cloud application integrations

Business application integration is critical to make sure that your systems are talking to one another. Having to switch between screens that require different passwords and transfer data between applications slows business down and destroys productivity.

In addition to basic email integration, your cloud communications solution should natively integrate with communications-enabled business processes (CEBP) and popular applications, like:

Customer relationship management (CRM) suites, like Salesforce, Oracle Sales Cloud, Zoho and SugarCRM
Microsoft Exchange and Gmail
Microsoft Office 365
Google Apps
Other vertical business applications within healthcare, insurance, retail, or real estate as examples

Two approaches to extensibility include application programming interfaces (APIs) so customers can create custom integrations and packaged/supported integrations that have already been created (such as Salesforce.com).

Contact center functionality in the cloud

Not every business has a formal contact center, but every business can benefit from contact center functionality.

Regardless of the terminology (customer specialist, sales agent or support representative) your business has a need to route incoming calls efficiently, while effectively measuring customer service metrics.

Contact center functionality is a key benefit of unified communications. With the cloud, businesses of any size can enjoy the advanced features of a contact center without the upfront costs. The ultimate customer experience starts with key contact center functionality, like:

Skills‐based automated call distribution (ACD): Skills-based ACD helps your business optimize resources by helping you handle a large number of incoming customer calls with a minimal number of skilled agents, sales primes or support reps. A skills‐based ACD system routes incoming calls to the longest idle agent within a specific agent skills group. If no agents are available, calls are queued and forwarded to an agent when one becomes available.
First call resolution: Create multiple skill groups that prioritize and route calls to the most appropriately skilled agent based on pre‐defined skill proficiency levels. This ensures each call gets to the best available resource to meet the customer’s needs. Agents appearing in more than one skill group may be assigned a different skill proficiency level for each group.
Monitor and manage: Real‐time and historical reporting provides contact center supervisors with the information they need to manage resources efficiently and optimize response times. Identify problem areas, analyze trends in performance and make informed decisions.
Remote agents: Optimize business processes by providing home‐based and remote workers with complete access to ACD voice and data capabilities.

Cloud communications pricing

Prices tend to be fairly competitive among cloud communications providers and can be difficult to compare due to different bundling options. Focus on the features and functionality that your business needs—and remember that price isn’t everything.

There’s tremendous value in flexibility. You should give extra consideration to a cloud service provider that provides flexible pricing, like allowing you to purchase individual features and licenses – or bundled features and groups of licenses – and scale up or down as your business needs change.

Security and compliance in cloud communications systems

Cloud communications providers must provide advanced security measures, including full encryption, for all of their subscribers. Compliance with stringent security and privacy standards and requirements is essential, including:

Sarbanes‐Oxley (SOX)
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)

Service level agreements (SLAs) for cloud communications

Look for a cloud communications provider that hosts their services in multiple, geographically dispersed Tier 4 data centers. This helps to ensure that your communications never go down due to a single network outage, hardware failure, or even a major disaster.

Data center tier levels are as follows:

Tier 1: Single non‐redundant distribution path serving IT infrastructure, non‐redundant capacity components, basic site infrastructure with expected availability of 99.671 percent (approximately 29 hours of downtime per year)
Tier 2: Meets or exceeds all Tier 1 requirements and redundant site infrastructure capacity components with expected availability of 99.741 percent (approximately 23 hours of downtime per year)
Tier 3: Meets or exceeds all Tier 2 requirements with multiple independent distribution paths serving the IT equipment, all IT equipment is dual‐powered and fully compatible, and concurrently maintainable site infrastructure with expected availability of 99.982 percent (approximately 90 minutes of downtime per year)
Tier 3+: Terms for this certification vary by region. Meets or exceeds all Tier 3 requirements with dual-powered cooling equipment (including chillers and heating, ventilation and air conditioning, or HVAC, systems), and fault‐tolerant infrastructure with electrical power storage and distribution facilities an expected availability of 99.995 percent (approximately 26 minutes of downtime per year).

Service‐level agreements (SLAs) should provide easy-to-understand and useful performance metrics, including uptime and availability, performance, latency, jitter and loss, as well as clear escalation and remediation procedures.

Penalties for non‐compliance can never compensate a business for lost revenue opportunities, but should provide compensation beyond one‐to‐one service credits (one hour of service credit for every hour of downtime) and allow a business to terminate the service if it becomes untenable.

Self‐service portals

A user portal should be simple and help your users access the full functionality of their cloud communications suite, whether they’re sitting at a desktop PC, working from a tablet at home, or using a mobile phone.

The administrator portal in a cloud communications solution should be powerful and intuitive, helping IT administrators quickly and easily set up new users and change capabilities for existing users, as required.

Role‐based access controls help ensure that geographically dispersed IT staff have the necessary permissions to support the business and their users—but not more. Site- and team-level access further simplifies administration of the system.

If a cloud communications solution requires extensive training to figure out its admin portal, it’s too hard!

Billing and customer service

Billing is challenging for many organizations, and cloud communications providers are no exception.

Many cloud communications providers simply offer “unlimited” calling, which is great until you need to dig into details. For example, how do you determine peak periods and average call times to plan your call center staffing needs? How do you know where the majority of your calls are coming from to help identify potential market segmentation opportunities?

Look for a cloud communications provider that can provide you with online access to simplified, detailed billing information.

Customer service can be a real differentiator for cloud communications providers. How hard is it to reach a live person when you have a technical or billing question? As with anything, you should expect exceptional customer service from your service provider.