Exclusive Hold

"Exclusive Hold"....  sounds esoteric doesn't it?    OK, so what is it?

Exclusive Hold is just a way to put a call on hold so that it can only be retrieved from the phone where you used the Exclusive Hold feature.

How do you use it?

Press Feature then Hold

If you want to put a call on Exclusive Hold, press the feature key and then the Hold key.  The screen will then display "Exclusive Hold".

Why would I want to use this feature?

In very busy environments, people can get mixed up about which call is holding on which line.  Using Exclusive Hold ensures that no one else can accidentally pickup your holding caller.

Upgrade Options for Nortel owners

As the unbelievably reliable and rugged Nortel systems out there get up in age, owners of these systems begin thinking "what is the migration path for my phone system?"

In case you didn't know, Nortel was dissolved in 2009 and sold off in three parts at auction.  The part of the company that deals with business phone systems was acquired by AVAYA.

 Avaya wasted no time in informing all the Nortel Norstar owners that their systems would be "out of support" in short order.  Avaya's solution was that you upgrade to an "Avaya IP Office".  Unfortunately, many did.  From my experience in the field many of those who upgraded were not as happy with the new Avaya IP Office as they had been with their previous Nortel Norstar systems.

As far as upgrading is concerned, I will propose three possible paths (although there are more, to be sure).

1. Upgrade to an Avaya IP Office (and go through the learning-curve)
2. Upgrade to an entirely different provider such as Cisco, Samsung, or other. (learning-curve)
3. Upgrade to a E-Metrotel UCx (and keep the good old Nortel experience you're used to).

First the IP Office:

 If you get warm fuzzies from sticking with brand loyalty that has treated you well in the past, then Avaya is your solution.  Nortel no longer exists, but Avaya is the company that bought their phone system business.  But, to be clear, the Avaya culture is NOT the same as the Nortel culture.

While the Avaya product does not resemble the Nortel product, it is possible to leverage existing Norstar telephone sets with and Avaya backend phone system.  From what I have heard in the field, it's been a luke-warm reception.  The Norstar phones do work as they did before, for the most part, but technicians have told me it's pain to work with.

The other Avaya option is to go 100% fork-lift upgrade (meaning throw out everything and get all new).  This puts an Avaya IP Office handset on every user's desk.  There will be a learning curve.  And, there is the potential to get all kinds of new, killer applications for Unified Communication.

Personally, I do think the Avaya IP Office is  a very cool looking system.  The aesthetics of the upper-end phones (96XX series) are very inviting.  And, the Unified Communication tool will blow your mind (tablet integration, video).

I have two major complaints with Avaya IP Office systems:
1. Every time you turn around, there's a fee for licensing, maintenance, or upgrades.  Avaya insist that if you want to maintain support from them, the system must stay upgraded within at least 2 major releases.  For example if you're on version 7.1 and the current version is 9.1.  You'll need to upgrade to at least 8.0 in order to receive support.

2. Flakey behavior.  I've been working on these systems a few times a month.  There are some behaviors that I find confidence-shaking.  For example.  Sometimes the system will develop behavior quirks that are only remedies by rebooting.  No cause was found  - just reboot and the problem goes away.
Another is that the database (the place where program settings are stored) can become corrupted.  Some of this may be due to the fact that information is stored on a little SD card in the unit.  SD memory is not perfect.

On balance, you won't go wrong if you upgrade to Avaya's option.  But, there may still be better choices for you.

Upgrading to something entirely different:

If you're thinking of upgrading the Nortel system, now would be the time to consider something entirely different.  I know, we love the Nortel and we hate to see it go.  But, that era is over now (well, except for the UCx which I'll talk about next).

One system that I see a everywhere these days is the Cisco phones.  One of the things that is very attractive about Cisco phones is they integrate well if you already have a Cisco network infrastructure.  Cisco phone are 100% Voice-over-IP (aka: "VoIP").  That means, they run just like network devices.  They do not require a separate phone wire infrastructure.  (in fairness Avaya IP Office make both VoIP and non-VoIP phones).

I find the network administrators, especially those who are well verse in Cisco technology, love the Cisco phones because they are managed very much like the rest of the Cisco network infrastructure.

Polycom is another good choice.  Polycom is also 100% VoIP solution.  And, it is an especially good choice if you are thinking of going with a non-local, cloud-based phone system.  This means that instead of having the phone system server (pbx or key system) locally on your premises, the phone system is something that lives in the cloud.  Usually, there is a monthly service fee you pay for this.  However, there can be some really cool advantage to having a cloud-base phone system.  Portability and disaster resilience are two of the big ones!

Poycom makes a good choice for small and mid-sized office environments that don't require sophisticated call handling.  Thee telephone sets are very affordable. Also, I mentioned portability.  For instance, taking your office phone home with you and plugging it in a home is something the Polycoms can facilitate pretty easily (Cisco and Avaya can too, it' just not as easy to setup).

One complaint I have had with Polycom is that many people are used to "line appearances".  That refers to a "line 1, line 2, line 3, etc." universal appearance on every phone.  The reason we, as users, like this is it gives us a simple method for transfering calls.  We put the call on hold and then just inform the desired party to retrieve the all from the appropriate line.

In the Polycom world (and with many other VoIP phones) the line appearance concept goes away and is replaced by "call appearances".  Call appearances are a little less linear in that they do not universally appear the same on every phone.  It can take a while to get used to.

There a whole myriad of other brand choices.  I can't speak to them as well, because I don't encounter them much in my work travels.  Right now (2015), what I see the most of out there is Avaya, Cisco, Polycom and the old Nortels.


E-metrotel's UCx platform

If you currently have a large installation of Nortel phones.  Upgrading to something completely new can be very expensive.  Mainly, because the cost of the desk telephone are what drives a large portion the total solution.  Here's some quick math to give an example:

Avaya PBX (small) is about $2500
each Avaya desk phone (basic) is about $200

replacing a small office of 8 phones is about $5000 (including the install/training costs).

But, a larger installation where there are 100 desk phones looks like this:
Avaya PBX (medium) $8000
each Avaya desk phone @ $200 = $20,000

So, roughly $30,000 for that scenario.

Now, imagine if you could replace only the PBX (the phone system brain).  That same installation would be about $10,000 (including install costs).

That's where E-metrotel's UCx comes in.   They make a system that seamlessly replaces the Nortel back-end PBX.  You literally could upgrade the system on a Friday night and your phone users would even know the difference on Monday morning.

Why?  because the phones are the same and they work the same way they used to.

But the real kicker is that you get all these new, cool Unified Communications tools that you would expect from a modern system.

And, you're not locked in to only using Nortel phones.  As your phones wear out you can choose to replace them with the abundance of surplus that is out there.  Or, you can elect to go with another brand of phone such as a Polycom.

Wrapping it up

There is no BEST OPTION here.  The solution that is best for you depends on your situation and you're tolerance for change.  I have a personal bias because I am such a fan of the Nortel system that of course I would be gunning for the UCx solution.  However, if I were making a recommendation for you as one of my clients, I would weigh all the different factor in your environment.

Norstar owners - the Clock is Ticking!

During the preceding two decades, Nortel (aka: Northern Telecom during the early 90′s) made some of the best business phone systems in the world. Many of you readers may still own Nortel phone systems. For those of you who don’t know, in 2009 Nortel fell into financial trouble because of some mis-managment at the top (similar to Enron or Worldcom). They were forced to sell their three major business units.

Nortel’s phone system unit was sold to Avaya. Avaya has discontinued support for many of the Nortel products – especially the popular NORSTAR series phone systems.

The popular refrain I hear from Norstar owners is “hey, it works great, why fix it if ain’t broke?”. Yes, I would agree. However, keep in mind that as these Norstar systems continue to age a few things become more worrisome.

1. The memory that holds the programming data (set numbers, ringing configurations, etc) is vulnerable to loss because the small battery inside the system wears out and no longer can hold the memory during a brief power outages.

2. Qualified technicians become more rare. Since most techs are out in the field installing the latest new equipment, they’re not seeing many Norstars anymore. And, old-timers, more familiar with Norstar, have since moved-on or been promoted to managers.

3. Parts become harder to find. This is a bit of a paradox as any quick search on eBay would seem to contradict what I just stated. As far as finding phone sets and pbx modules – it’s true, the used market is abound with them right now. However, specialty items such as particular software, voice mail hard/flash drives are not in as ready abundance.

What’s the best way to deal with this? The quick, easy, and most affordable way is to get a backup done and be sure your system is surge and lightning protected. Most *Good* techs who have the right equipment can perform a backup in less than 2 hours. Once you have a backup, it can be restored in about an hour. This is a better alternative that having to have the system re-programmed from scratch (which could take the better part of a day!)
Surge and Lightning protection should be less than $200 USD plus about an hour of install time.

Another approach, is creating what is known as a “Crash Kit”. This a collection of parts you would purchases (used) and keep on-hand in the event of a system failure. For most medium-sized Nortels (20-50 users), a Crash kit would probably be less than $1000 USD.

Finally, the ultimate and eventual path is to plan the upgrade to a new Business Phone system. The best time to do that planning is while the system you own is still running well.

Norstar as a sound monitor

I just recently had a major change in my lifestyle that caused me to investigate how to use my Norstar phone system as a Baby Monitor. This same idea could be applied many ways - not just for listening to sleeping babies.

The idea is very, very simple. You can do this one of two ways:

OPTION #1. simply go to the phone in the space you want to monitor (in my case, the baby's room) and make a hands-free intercom call to the phone where you want to listen from (i.e. the kitchen, garage, front office). It will help if there is someone waiting at that phone to answer it. Then just put the that second phone on hands free also. And there you have it, a direct speaker phone/speaker phone connection. Also, as not to send sound back to the babies room, I mute my HF key.


OPTION #2. This actually my prefered method. I go to the baby's room and press the key for PAGE. Depending on how your phone system is configured you may need to adjust 3 things:
- there will be a page time-out setting in the system programming. You'll want this as long as possible. Ususally 45 mins is max. (on some older systems, it may be indefinite).
- the page button should be programmed to page over "speaker and sets". (Feature * 630)
- The sets that you wish to send page to must all be in at least some page zone and have paging enabled.

The reason I like option#2 is it allows me to traverse the house from room to room (or basement) and I can monitor the babies room phone from any phone I happen to be near.

Now, if you want to get really fancy, you could put only specific phones into a particular page group (let's say page group 3). And then you could target the page broadcast to F*633 (the feature command for paging over speaker & sets on page group 3). This would allow you to exclude phones that didn't need to hear the paging such as another child's room, the living room or other.

Now I know I used the "baby monitoring" example. And, that's because it's something I need right now. But, just think for a minute of the ways this idea could be applied to other situations.

- a front office where the person staffing the front reception area has to go to the back part of the building. If that person were to press the page key on that phone in the front area, he could walk to other parts of the office and still hear the door, door chime, bells, whatever.

In any case, I hope that helps someone.

Assign speed dial number to button on Norstar phone

If you a have a Norstar phone system and you have a phone with some extra buttons on there doing nothing, you've probably wondered if you could assign a speed dial number to one. The answere is YES.

Now, in proper Nortel terms assigning a number to a button is called AUTODIAL. And, Autodial comes in two varieties - External Autodial and Internal Autodial. For this discussion, we'll focus on External Autodial.

First, what buttons can be programmed? Well, if you have a 7310 (not sure? try looking on the bottom side of the phone), you should have at the top of the phone a set of 4 x 3 buttons about 1/2" x 1" big. All those buttons can be assigned as AutoDial buttons. If you don't have a 7310, then your choices are limited. See the video for more on this.

Anyway, the way the assigning of a number is done is by pressing FEATURE * 1. Then press the button to be assigned. Then dial the digits and press OK (you'll see the word OK) in the LCD screen.

Here' s the video that shows you step-by-step:

change time on Norstar

Changing time on the Norstar phone system is the most common request I get as a phone technician. Two reasons this is true are:
1. anytime the Norstar phone system loses power, the clock stops. So, when power is restored, the time if by the amount of time the system was without power.
2. many of the Norstar systems don't have a setting for Dalylights Savings Time, so two times a year the time has to be changed.

Now, there is more than one way to change the time. I'm going to start with the simplest.

Try using the following key sequence from a 7310 or a 7324 phone (if you don't know what these phones are, search earlier posts in my blog where I have pictures).

Press FEATURE * * 8 4 6 3 (spells T-I-M-E)
if you get prompted for a password, the default is usually 266344.

If you get nothing.. or you just see the digits 8463 sitting in the screen, it probably means you have an older version of software and we'll program the time change a different way.

Here's the video that covers what we just did:



IF the FEATURE * * 8463 did NOT work, then we need to enter the Administrative programing mode.
That is done by entering FEATURE * * 2 3 6 4 6. The default password is usually 2 3 6 4 6.

See this video on how to navigate to the place where you change the time and date.