Hi folks,
My expertise is in networking, so please accept my apologies if I use incorrect terminology.
We have a brand new shiny Exchange 2010 server. In another building (this is at the district level for a K-12 institution) there is a Nortel Phone switch. That phone switch connects to a PC that has an 8 port FXO card in it. The 8 lines go to the Nortel switch. The PC runs a very old version of Synrevoice that is no longer supported by the vendor at the end of March. We migrated the Synrevoice call out software to a hosted solution. The voicemail portion of Synrevoice still is the core voicemail system for that building. When people call they hit an auto-attendant,,, for most people you enter a 3 digit extension and their phone rings 4 times before going to voicemail. If a message is recorded, the lamp on the phone turns on. To retrieve a message you press a voicemail button on the phone and are prompted for a password and off you go.
What I'm interested in considering is could we pick up something like the DMG1008LSW and just plug it into those 8 analogue lines coming off the phone switch, install a Microsoft UC server across the network, toss in some configuration, and expect this to replace Synrevoice? I can deal with the Microsoft UC to Exchange integration (looks straight forward from the docs). I'm only interested at this time in solving the voicemail challenge (replacing Synrevoice).
My local telephone provider is incredibly conservative and has no interest in this kind of thing. They would prefer to just buy a Nortel certified VM module and be done with it. I'm looking at it from the standpoint that this could be the first step towards a full VOIP platform (voicemail today) to replace some of our 12-20+ year old phone switches. If we can prove it with VM, I'm sure I can get the go ahead in a year or two.
What kinds of questions do I need to answer?
What kinds of documentation or examples should I be reading?
Thanks so much for your indulgence...
Tim Dressel
Director of IT
School District 52, Prince Rupert, BC, Canada
What kind of Nortel phone switch is it (e.g. Nortel Meridian Option x, Nortel Norstar, etc...). My only concern is integration data being passed to the DMG1008ls from the Nortel PBX. With Exchange, you could set up an Auto Attendant, and it could transfer callers to extensions. My only concern is once that call is ring no answer / busy forwarded to voicemail (dmg1008ls), what kind of integration data will the dmg get for forwarded or even direct calls. It would need to get calling party data for direct calls and redirecting party data for forwarded calls to automatically integrate to the correct mailbox within MS Exchange.
If there is no integration data being passed from the PBX through the analog lines, then the subscribers sets could still forward to the hunt group, although when dialing in directly to voicemail, you would always have to enter your mailbox number, then log in to check messages. And possibly, those leaving you messages would have to also request your mailbox when trying to leave you voice mails.
So my first question is what exactly is the PBX you are dealing with? Do you know if there is any integration data being passed down the analog lines (e.g. inband DTMF tones (type 2 CPID). Or is there some type of serial connection (voicemail integration) between the PBX and the existing voicemail? I am real curios how the existing infrastructure is working. I know back in the day they would have a PBX Link box (Calista) or a VB2 (Voice technologies) connected to digital set lines that would conveniently "scrape" display data from the digital connection and turn it into SMDI to be sent to the voicemail for integration. Is it possible one of these exist in your environment now? If so, and if you had extra digital set ports on your PBX, you could possibly do a digital set integration using a DMG1008DNI and Exchange. With digital set lines the DMG would be passed all of the integration data directly and pass it to Exchange for direct and forwarded calls to voicemail. Users would not have to enter their mailbox number etc...it would be a direct clean integration from the PBX to voicemail.
If you have any other questions let us know. You can always call our free advice line for more information as well. As for one of the gateway guys, or Dave to get to me. 973-967-6600
Thanks for the reply Dave,
The phone switch is a Nortel Modular DR5.1. I've got a copy of the programming record which I scanned to PDF, but there is enough information on the record that I don't think its safe to just post to the internet. :) It has the following items:
Key Service Unit (KSU)
Expansion Cartridge, 2 port
Expansion Cartridge, 6 port
Trunk Cartridge, Loop Start
Trunk Cartridge, E&M/DISA
Trunk Cartridge, DID
Trunk Cartridge, CI
Trunk Module
Station Module
Call Indentification Module
Power bar
The phones are all M7xxx series.
Your questions about what kind of data will be forwarded, or for direct calls is definitely outside my understanding of how a phone switch works. Right now when you pick up to call voicemail, it assumes you are going to a single mailbox, but you can enter a different mailbox and the password for that mailbox by dialing a feature code first.
I could send you the PDF of this programming record,,, let me know if that would help. tdressel at sd52 dot bc dot ca.
Cheers,
Sounds like it is a Norstar system that supports M7324 phones then you can use a DMG1008DNI and can be sure that it integrates versus using analog (not sure how it would integrate).
Dave
