Best softphone? 1

[EAdams2009]

We have IP Office 9.1 What is the best softphone? We have some people working from home and I was asked to check on how I can get their extension to their house. Is a softphone the best solution? Which one if so? What all do I need as far as licenses?

 

[EAdams2009]

BTW, we have asa5505's at all our remote offices to vpn them back to us and this is how we connect the VoIP phones at those offices back here. People home internet routers do not have VPNs back to us. We are considering giving them laptops with a VPN installed and using softphones unless there is a better idea.

 

[Okkie26]

If you have VPN's, use H323 hardphones.

 

[EAdams2009]

It works for remote sites but we don't have ASA5505's on people's home internet lines. We have the laptops and are installing VPN's on peoples home desktops. Do the phones plug into a laptop or PC?

 

[EAdams2009]

Maybe a Cisco Meraki Z1 VPN'd back to our corporate office and plug a 9608g into one of its ethernet ports?

 

[Okkie26]

Which licenses do you have in the IPO?

 

[EAdams2009]

As far as extra's VoIP sets only. We use 9608g phones here.

 

[Westi]

You need user licenses, (office worker, Teleworker or Power User) then a VPN from the Laptops into the network and then Avaya Communicator.
You don't need anything more than that and Communicator is basic enough that people will not drive you nuts with questions once installed

If you don't have licenses then forget it with softphones and the only way to do it is with IP hardphones that create a VPN tunnel to your firewall and then to the IP Office if you have IP endpoint licenses

If you have neither licenses then forwarding the extensions or twinning is your only way with digital lines (PRI or SIP)

None of the above then you are SOL I am afraid

Joe
FHandw, ACSS (SME)

Remembering intrigrant 2019

 

[RINGINnBLINGIN]

@eadams, what people are saying for the vpn is the 9608s have an ipsec vpn client on board the phone. you can simply configure this and the phone will function like it's in the office. get your google-fu on to find the settings for your firewall to get it setup...

at 9.1, the communicator on a vpn will be your friend for softphones. just remember rtp traffic is fat so it could bog down your vpn.

neither of these options require additional licensing.

 

[jeffstev]

We just went thru this entire exercise and as of yesterday I now have 50 remote sales reps successfully selling wine over the phone on Mac and PC.
I've been building this for years now and it finally paid off, big time.

We don't have the option of deploying phones to everyone's house, but I do have a couple key reps who have a physical phone and headset using a VPN firewall, hub, PC,etc.

We are on a 500 IPO 9.0.12, and we use SIP end to end and via our carriers. I have licenses for literally everything under the sun.

On PC's we are using the Softphone_Win32_3.2.3.49_68975.exe
On Macs, I now use Softphone 4.1.1.2 (74851)
We use OpenVPN software with locked down ports and Remote Desktop for our users. Interestingly running the Softphone remote on RDP using a USB Logitech headset works ok as well.

I've bee downloading literally a dozen client apps to see if I can get a better experience for my users.
The ones listed above are the only clients that appear to work with our CRM applications that control dialing the phone. TCPA and all that garbage is built into our systems.

Honestly, I'm shocked at how bad Avaya client software is. Softconsole requires a receptionist license and I only have 4 of those so I can't deploy that to all users. Not that I really want to...

If anyone has ANY other suggestions for a PC SIP client that works better than this, I'm all ears.

I've tried Communicator, One-X and they are all garbage. As you can see, I'm still at it:

Avaya makes it soooo friggin hard to find this crap that I'm more than happy to share these files if needed by anyone.

Jeff

 

[CASSBusinessSystems]

We've had good success with IX Workplace, One-x Mobile, and Communicator on R11 FP 4 SP 2. We use ASAv firewalls.