Clean Phone Closet = Better Service!

Ask any technician who works on networks, computers, phone systems, etc. -  ”Does a clean equipment environment really help me get better service?”

I can’t think of an instance when the answer would be “no, cleanliness makes no difference”.  Keeping a clean equipment room will ALWAYS have a positive effect on the efficiency of the service you receive from your equipment as well as the server tech, PBX repair man, or network specialist who works on them.

Why?  (I answer from experience here) Because, these spaces (server rooms, pbx closets, network closets) often get neglected.  It’s easy for them to get dusty and cluttered with miscellaneous storage items.  Here’s some examples:  PBX closets often contain brooms, mop buckets, Christmas decorations, bankers boxes and all sorts of other junk that no one really knows where to put.  Server rooms, because they are often restricted and locked, don’t get vacuumed or dusted much – if ever.

These conditions cause two things:

1. An excess amount of heat to build-up and pre-maturely send electronics to an early death.

2.  The cluttered, disorganized and dusty environment causes the service professional to assume you must not care that much about your technology infrastructure so why should she?

Think about this the next time you aret about to store that life-sized cardboard image of Santa Clause in the PBX closet.  Or, ask the Network Admin if he would like to schedule a time when the cleaning crew could get into the server room for  a good dusting and vacuuming.

Beware...Caller ID can be Faked!

For some of you this may not be news. But in case some of my readers are not aware, I am here to explain that the Caller ID that is presented to you from an inbound caller can be altered by the sending party. Caller ID in its very early days was mainly managed by the Bell companies (aka: Baby Bells). Over time, the management of Caller ID has been decentralized to the point where just about anyone with a little industry knowledge and geeky prowess can manufacture just about any Caller ID number they wish.

I won’t use the scope of this blog post to go into the technical how-to’s. I will just summarize that anyone (not just phone service providers) who has access to the right equipment or software can generate custom Caller ID numbers.

So, where does that leave us? Well to me, it just means that the presented Caller ID should be regarded as a convenience, but not a validation of identity. This convenience makes it easy for us to screen calls, invoke certain actions (screen pops), and speed up transactions. Where I get a little more alarmed is when my automated bank teller tells me I don’t need to enter my pin because they see I am calling from one of the phone numbers in my profile.

Obviously, I can’t change the bank’s behavior. And, it doesn't keep me awake at night. This is just one of those little chinks in the armor they’ll have to work out at some point.

So for now, be armed with the knowledge that Caller ID is no guarantee of identity.

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.

connecting to Nortel 5550 or 4550 switch to manage

Just got done spending a bunch of time trying to get connected to some of my Nortel ethernet switches. Since the learning curve is fresh in my brain, I thought I share it for others to find. (Lord knows, I get a lot of trival info from the web).

If no management IP address has been established for the switches yet, then the first step is to connect via a 9-pin console cable. I believe this is a PROPRIETARY cable. I tried using a regular 9-pin serial cable to no avail. Later, I bought a cable that was said to be specifically for this purpose. Sorry, I don't have the pinout. But, I do have the part #! :-)

If I'm wrong about not being able to use a straight serial cable, please leave me a comment so I can add the correction here.

The part # for the special Nortel cable I got is AL2011013-E6 02 SC111108.

Anyway, if/when you get the special cable, or it's equivalent, and you're all connected... establish a serial connection at 9600 8N1. Then hit "ENTER" a few times. If you see nothing, which is likely. Do a "CTRL+Y".. that should pop-up the welcome screen. Or, it may prompt you to enter an IN-BAND management IP address.

You are now connected. I will not go into the minutia of setting up a management IP address in this post.

setting time or date on Nortel PBX

I am writing these steps as they pertain to a Nortel CS1000 PBX, but these same step will most likely work on any of the Nortel PBX family (Option 11, Option 22, Option 81, SL-1).

You'll need to be at the console (or remote connected to the console). The console is that black & green screen where the programming for the PBX is done. It usually resides in the same room with the PBX cabinets. But, some people can access it remotely either by modem or over the Network using something like Hyper terminal or Procomm.

Login to the console with

LOGI
> USERID? admin (or whatever login name you use here)
>PASS? (enter your password)

now, type LD 02
you'll see just a period at the prompt like so
and, we'll type TTAD to see the current time
.TTAD
. WED 24 JUN 2009 17 10 34
.

Now, we'll type STAD to change the time and then enter the date and time like this
DD MM YYYY HH MM SS (Date, Month, Year, Hours, Mins, Seconds)
.STAD 24 06 2009 17 11 00
.

if you get an error it means either your format is wrong OR your login doesn't have enough rights to change the time. Ask or check around to see if there is another login and try that one.

To exit this mode, type **** (enter)
This exits the LD 02 program. Now, to log out completely, type LOGO (enter)

you are done :-)

Here's the video on this one:



OK

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: