Has anyone here administered a Mitel switch before?

[georgiw]

How hard was it to learn to administer the Mitel versus the Avaya for those of you who have done both? Did you have to take formal training or learn on your own?

Is the Mitel easy to support or does it require regular maintenance activites and if so, how often?

What is the most recent brand of the Mitel PBX system? I tried to look at the Mitel website to find information on administration but all of their documents are locked down with login/passwords of customers or users. I'm wondering if anyone could share a couple of administration pages of a manual with me so I can get a flavor for it versus the Avaya Communication Manager which is what I manage now?
Thanks.

 

[amriddle01]

Wrong forum anyway, but any Mitel and the ACM are harder to configure and less intuitive than an IPO


Avaya Implementation Qualified Professional Specialist Technical Engineer (AIQPSTE)

 

[yankblan]

I do both. Mitel MCD (formerly known as 3300) is the standard today.

As far as regular maintenance, there is none. What I like is the built in DHCP server (full one).

Very few reboots required. Embedded is better than IPO. Hardware (phones) are better, less buggy. Analog lines better supported. Support from Mitel (if certified) tons better. If 50 users plus, faster to set up cause you can create a full csv file with ALL features and buttons and import. Less patches and releases for fixes and bugs. Teleworker with MBG is excellent and robust, and comes with a VPN server for remote support for all applications. And other things.

Cons: overall setup is a lot longer, although all the forms are exportables, so if you have templates, not as long. Online licensing only is a pain. COS and COR more flexible but harder to grasp if you dont toy with them frequently. Upgrade is a long and hard process depending on release. Administration only through IE, so Firefox, Chrome no go, and everything is live when programming. Cant view config offline.

For now all I can think off. Cost means we do installs on larger scales Mitel, and smaller Avaya.

http://interconnexionsld.ca/

 

[georgiw]

Thanks everyone for the information.

 

[intrigrant]

I did Mitel once and I did not like it then, it was far from intuitive or logical to program.
Mitel turned out to be a bad partner too.
Once we had a lead or a nice multisite customer and we were in the final stage, Mitel had to be involved and they contacted them directly and took over the lead leaving us with nothing. That was the end of our Mitel experience. In the end the customer bought a Avaya CM from us as they did not like the approach from Mitel in respect to their partners ( yes we do have loyal customers ).

A simple mind delivers great solutions

 

[tlpeter]

Mitel is totally not logical.
When somebody else programmed it and you need to make changes then you search and keep searching until you at the end find it.
Funny when somebody have programmed a multicall button but you do not know where good luck is needed!
The comment on less buggy can be ignored as this is not the case anymore.
What a piece of crap it became lately.
We do both and i try to stay away from Mitel as far as i can.
I think we have a hundred times more IPO customers but the most shit is coming from the Mitels!
Even the amount of bugs raised to support is 5 times higher.
Do the math.


BAZINGA!

I'm not insane, my mother had me tested!

 

[Mullet_Rocker]

I regularly install the Mitel 5000 and the Avaya IP Office. The recommendations above are for the Enterprise solutions from each vendor. I assume since you posted this question in the IP Office forum, you're not looking for an enterprise solution? I actually like both systems.

IP Office:

Pros: Intuitive, therefore easier to program/manage. VM Pro is very nice and flexible. Phones are nicer, both IP and Digital....(Self-labeling digitals are nice). Short codes are nice.

Cons: Embedded VM is kind of a pain sometimes, but once you get used to "tricking" it and making it to do what you want, it's not all bad. To me, the IPO is more buggy than the Mitel 5000.

Mitel 5000:

Pros: Very nice embedded voicemail that allows for multi-layer Auto Attendants (CRAs - Call Routing Announcement). CRAs also allow for you to be creative and better manipulate where a call gets directed to. DEE is very nice when used with PRI service. IP phones are nice....not as nice as Avaya's. 5360 touch screen IP phone is sweet.

Cons: The Mitel 5000 definitely has its own "way of thinking" in terms of programming the system. However, once you get used to their way of thinking, it's not bad at all. The digital phones are just OK. It would be nice if Mitel would come out with self-labeling digital phones. The IPO has a few models of phones that are the same in appearance whether it's a Digital phone or IP phone.....it would be nice if Mitel could duplicate that....make some digital phones that are the same in appearance as their 5320, 5330 and 5340 IP phones.

Both systems are very nice...for someone not familiar with key/pbx programming, the IP Office would probably be your best bet. However, I think the Mitel 5000 out of the box is more flexible than the IPO.

 

[yankblan]

Tlpeter:

Im on call night and weekends on Mitel side; emergency calls (one per 2 weeks approx) is 9 out of 10 related to carrier or UPS related. As for.locating multicalls, use maintenance commands!

Its true though that you have to set up a standard programming template or you can get loss in the MCD. But bugs? Pretty rare. We support a whole city with a cluster of about 12 MCDs and we never get emergency calls.

As for 5000 I keep hearing great things, but the pricing for the 20-50 users range is indecent.

http://interconnexionsld.ca/