Cisco Unified Communication 540, questions on capabilities

[MSDI]

Hi,

I've been into Nortel Norstar since 15 years and now that the brand is dead I've been looking for the past year for replacements... I've look into Avaya Ip Office, E-MetroTel, Asterisk, Digium, etc but since I really like Cisco products for the rest (Routers, Load Balancers, firewalls, Access points, etc) I'm trying to see if the product would be good enough for our needs.

I've found the UC540W to be good in term of price since there is no per user fee, no licenses and comes with POE, FXOs, FXS, etc already in...

I've read a lot of documentation on the subject and there are still a couple of questions I have and I hope someone with experience on the product can help me on this.

1- I've read we can retrieve voicemails through Imap (An imap server on the UC device), isn't there an easier way by just configuring an email address and a smtp server. Would prefer to stick to our exchange server and not have to configure an imap account also.

2- It is mentionned there is An ACD, but from what I read, it's just a hunt group... I'm looking into putting people in a queue but hopefully having more sophisticated features like: Breakout message saying "If you are tired to wait, press 1 to a message", or "You are third in queue, average waiting time is 5 minutes". I'm also concerned about basic ACD reporting (how many calls, average waiting time, which agent took more calls, etc). Did I miss something or none of these are available on the UC540 ?

3- If a call comes from the queue, is there a way to see in the caller ID that it's coming from queue "XYZ" and the person waited 5 minutes. Is it possible also for agents to see the queue status so they can take more time with customers when the queue is empty while cutting the call shorter if there are a lot of people waiting ?

4- Is it safe to assume we would replace our PIX 515 at the border by this device ? We have basic nat only and a couple of IPSEC tunnels to other offices. It's mentionned there is a firewall in the unit but I am wondering if it's pix/ASA IOS or something else.

5- We'll have employees working from home. Do I need to configure an IPSEC tunnel and use the SIP phone over the link or is there something better ? I've read something about teleworker access feature but it's not clear what it is.

Any help would be really appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[gm85]

We are in the process of installing a UC560 system at our office. We've had a BCM50 system since 2007 and before that a Norstar 6x16 system since 1990. I've always liked the BCM50 system, however I got sick of the fact that every feature is licenced (Sip trunks, expansion cards, meet me conferencing, unified messaging) whereas on the UC500 system, the only licence required is for user (which includes both the phone and voicemail license).

I don't have an answer for #2 and 3 (hopefully someone else does), but I'll try to answer your other questions.

1 - Yes both options are available. The IMAP method you mentioned is called "Integrated Messaging", however you also have the ability to configure an email address for each mailbox and have the messages delivered via SMTP.

2&3 - I haven't looked too deeply into the BACD features of the UC500 system. We currently use a hunt group for support calls on our current BCM50 system and are setting the UC500 system to operate in a similar way. I believe that you can have custom scripts devleoped for call handling, and there may be one to support the features you are looking for, however I haven't looked too deeply into it.

4 - The UC500 system was designed as an "all-in-one" system: Firewall, NAT Gateway, VPN endpoint. That being said, I'd classify the networking features as pretty basic and intended for a small business. For instance, the UC500 does not support routing protocols. The UC500 is also configured for voice and data vlans for the phones and computers attached to the LAN ports. If you have a small network and are intending to have your UC500 handle all your network's voice and data, you should be okay. However, if you have a more extensive network (VPNs and Routing Protocols), then you can attach the UC500 to your network using the WAN port and disabling the firewall and NAT services. That's the approach we have taken with our network.

5 - If you have the UC500 attached to your internet connection, the Teleworker feature configures an SSL VPN between the Phone and the UC500. I believe the phones that allow the teleworker feature are the SPA525G2. As mentioned we are attaching the UC500 to our existing network, which already has an IPSEC DMVPN in place between our office and our teleworkers, so we didn't need to use this feature.

As noted above, the UC500 does require user licences. The UC540 comes with 24 user licences (upgradable to 32). The user licence grants a phone and voicemail box on the system (plus there are a few spare licences for additional phones). I don't know if the licences are honour-based, but it something to be aware of. It is nice though that all other features like SIP trunks, Voicemail to Email, and Meet Me Conferencing are licence-free.