Installing new Call Manager system

[NastyNed2]

Our city just awarded a contract to Cisco for a new phone system, so we're beginning the migration from an Option 61 and several Option 11s to a Cisco Call Manager system.

Seeking opinions on two items:

Cicso tells me the business world is getting away from using 9 for an outside line to prevent accidental 911 calls. In your collective experience, true or not true? Since I help run a 911 center, I see the merit to this. If this industry tradition is changing, is it changing to 7 or 8 for an outside line? (The Cisco system won't be part of handling the 911 calls. That will be a separate system.)

They also thought I was nutty when I said industry standard for going to voicemail is pretty much 24 seconds, which represents 4 rings cycles of 2 sec on and 4 sec off. They looked at me funny and said the standard is 18 sec. I don't know how many rings of theirs that corresponds to because their cadence is different than 2 on and 4 off. Again, what's been your experience?

Thanks for your help. I've been on the Nortel Meridian forum for a long time. That group has been tremendously helpful. Looking forward to learning more here as well.

 

[whykap]

The access code is changing from 9 these days due to lots of accidental 911 calls. The digit that it is replaced by depends on your dial plan. I have done 8 and 7 but 8 seems to be the most common. I always recommend to my customers to replace 9, some do it and some don't. It is really a business decision.

As far as the RNA timer I believe the CISCO default is 18 but not quite sure off top. There is no "industry standard" really, again personal preference and a business decision. Since in the CISCO world the times the phone rings within the designated RNA timer depends on the ring tone you select (unlimited selections as it is customized), you need to decide what the RNA timer is going to be and not "how many times the phone rings within that time" because that will vary.

You will find that CISCO is very flexible in its options and once it is up and running, stable, easy to use and once you gain some experience, fairly easy to support. Not any harder than any other telephony system out there.

 

[NastyNed2]

Thanks. I'm sure we have a lot to learn! Between the two of us, we have solid background in Nortel and Siemens. We'll probably do fine. Bottom line seems to be that 24 sec is standard regardless of how many rings or ring cycles are contained therein.

 

[pndscm]

The 18 or 24 seconds limit is a single field in Callmanager to change universally for the system. And the system setting can be overriden on all the lines individually in case you have a special case.

Like whykap, I'm not sure but I think the default use to be 12 seconds and I have always set it to 18 system wide as 12 is too short, 2-3 rings. 24 to me sounds long but it is really just an indiviual preference.

As for the access ncode, I have one customer using * as the access code. Usually I see 9 or 8 though.

 

[andyjreed]

I recently moved back to St. Louis after spending a few years in rural Indiana. It's almost all 9 here....but in Indiana, a LOT of businesses were using 7.

I suppose the theory was that 8 is (sort of)traditionally access to long distance trunks.