Conferencing – Complex Scenario

[Textron68]

Using an IP Office 500 R5.x (haven’t decided on specific release yet)
Sole purpose is to act as a conference bridge.
I have built a config with aprox 70 Conference Meet Me short codes. Each short code represents a specific ‘location’. About 10 to 15 bridges may be active at any given time with 3 to 6 participants per bridge. This part works as designed, tested proof of concept on R4.2 for our purpose.
What is being asked for now is ‘outside of scope’ and possibly beyond the capabilities of the system. So the scenario is – We have dial up radios in various locations across the country. They would like to be able to dial several radios and drop those calls into various conference bridges to be available for others to join and leave as needed. So at times the radio dial up would be the only participant in a given bridge. I know they can call the radio and conference into the Conference Meet Me, but they don’t want to tie up a user who may need to drop off the conference, thus dropping the radio from the conference as well.
I was thinking the Conferencing RFA, but Avaya no longer sells that RFA. It was discontinued when R6 was released. It wasn’t a big seller and they don’t want to support the software through later releases.
Now I’m looking at the Receptionist RFA (Formerly Soft Console), but reading it looks like it can only manage two (2) conference bridges.
So two questions:
1. Is there a way to dial the radios and Transfer them into their Conference Bridge as the first (and maybe the only participant) without tying up a user?
2. Other than using System Status to drop the call, what other options remain to disconnect the radio line when they are done with it? (if obstacle 1 is overcome)

 

[kwing112000]

Cant the person dial the radio wait for it to answer and then just transfer to the meet me short code. i tested on mine and it worked. It will stay connected until the radio hangs up.

Kevin Wing
ACSS Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Communications
ACS- Implement IP Office
ACA- Implement IP Office
Carousel Industries

 

[Textron68]

The system I was using to test the original proof of concept has been deployed, so I don’t have a local system to do further testing until later in the week. I figured transferring would work. The radios are being keyed through touch-tones, but I don’t know if there is a touch-tone code to ‘hang-up’. On the dial/transfer I am really looking for an automated process. I liked what I saw in the Conferencing RFA where it could be a drag and drop setup.

 

[kwing112000]

I dont think it was the conferencing that you were looking at. The was only for scheduling and stuff. Maybe it was phone manager or OneX

Kevin Wing
ACSS Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Communications
ACS- Implement IP Office
ACA- Implement IP Office
Carousel Industries

 

[Bas1234]

What do you mean by a "radio"?
Read the whole thing twice (sorry im dutch) but still not getting the goal.

___________________________________________
It works! Now if only I could remember what I did...

Dain Bramaged
___________________________________________

 

[IPOfficeIreland]

The transfer will work ok for joining the bridge. a long flash signal will hang up the call if you can get it to manipulate. You can also adjust the flash signals to suit within the analogue extension settings (assuming the radios are connected locally?) otherwise you could twin a virtual user with the radio and give it one-x call control. the radio can then use ** when the conference is finished, to get dial tone from the system again, and to disconnect transfer to a busy extension or extension with vm-set to disconnect.

???

 

[Textron68]

Bas.. As to 'Radio'. Ground to Air Radio to talk to Aircraft within line of site to the physical radio. The radio equipment is scatered across the country. The radio has an analog line telephone line connected. You can call the radio and it auto-answers on an incoming call. Then through DTMF you can key the radio and talk to aircraft in line of site on that frequency. So, 70 radio locations, 70 short codes for Conference Meet Me, each Conference Meet Me is designated for a particular Radio. Not all Radios need to be dialed into at once, but on average about 10 to 15 could be dialed into at any given time.
During these Radio conversations, various persons may need to bridge into the conversation. Since the radio only has one analog line, it cannot handle the bridging. So, using a conference solution to bridge as needed. It's trying to make it "Dummy" proof for the ones who will be using it that is a pain. I don't want to give someone more control than they need to perform their job.

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

Using an IP Office 500 R5.x (haven't decided on specific release yet)

just make sure its the latest

 

[Bas1234]

2. Other than using System Status to drop the call, what other options remain to disconnect the radio line when they are done with it? (if obstacle 1 is overcome)

In the shortcode under "telephone number" you can add a
t(x) behind the "code" the x can be a number from 1 up to 999 (999 is just a guess) the x will be x minutes. So if you put t(5) then the call lasts for 5 minutes.

___________________________________________
It works! Now if only I could remember what I did...

Dain Bramaged
___________________________________________

 

[Textron68]

Taker - Trying to avoid one-x and 70+ twinning licenses, but it did cross my mind. Good idea.
HSM - Latest release is not always the most stable for certain environments. I always start at the latest and work backwards if stability/performance is not what is expected.
Bas - The timer may be a good option, though someone would have to be a responsible timekeeper to make sure the radio doesn't drop mid-sentence. I won't find out till tomorrow if they have a DTMF code to have the radio hang-up.

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

Textron68 - I would tend to agree, but in this instance, Avaya generally will advise to run the latest firmware. its not often about stability but about the certain bug fixes and methods in which they implement features.

General response from Avaya support:

HSM: "Hi, I have an issue with ABC doing XYZ"

Avaya: "Hi, please run r5.<latest rel>, and send us your config and monitor traces. thanks."

 

[Textron68]

HSM – While it is true about Avaya Support, we are a self maintenance shop. We have not had a support issue in the past 3 years which required Avaya intervention. We have a standardized install base of 35+ IP Office system running 4.2(11). The only reason we are looking to move this system to R5.x is the increase in Conferencing slots.

I haven’t mentioned, but the IP Office in this configuration is a back-end conference solution. It will be installed behind a Definity G3. The Definity is managing the calls into the IP Office with two (2) T1 trunks between the systems. With the added request to dial up the Radios and drop the calls into the various bridges and keep them up, we are adding a LEC T1 into the IP Office and I am adding a VCM and probably a Reception (Soft Console) to the configuration for the sole purpose of managing the Radio dial-ups.

The Conference Users are not Users on the IP Office system, but are dial-in participants off the Definity G3.