IP Office 500 v2 with Release 8.1 SP10 (PRI Question)

[96008n1]

Greetings everyone,

I've searched the forum several times and really didn't see anything similar to the question I have. Currently I'm preparing to migrate one of my inherited sites over to an incoming PRI since the phone company here is wanting to drop our centrex service as fast as possible. Currently my provider (AT&T) is offering me a service called IP Flex with 16 call paths on it and is willing to port all my existing numbers over to it. What they are proposing to do is drop a managed T1 circuit at the location then installed their router and hand the service off to me using an emulated PRI circuit. I've been dealing with POTS for years due to the previous guy not budging on moving to a PRI circuit prior to this and now it's my baby and I think this might be the time to move due to the significant cost savings.

Now for my big question and I apologize if this has been answered before.

On the existing Centrex system I had 6 lines coming in with only our main number published and then depending on if it was busy it would roll/hunt until it found either a free line or return a busy signal. (Ex xxx-1000 being the main number with xxx-1001 thru xxx-1005 being the other lines). In addition I have another 6 POTS lines that come in as well and do not roll but serve more as private lines. When speaking with my AT&T rep he advised that they do not offer a roll service on their side like this since it is going to be handed to the system as essentially a traditional PRI circuit and said I would need to do the roll on my side. Has anyone ever set this up in IP Office on a PRI where certain lines would roll in a block such as this and then have the others not roll/hunt but serve as DID. I'm trying to get all of this figured out prior to July 1 when I would actually be taking the service live.

 

[amriddle01]

You can do everything they did on the Centrex lines and more, I am not going to go into detail as you have time to figure it out/explore it yourself, but rest assured you will not lose out on what you had it just works differently, mainly using hunt groups and overflow groups etc. All you need to decide is how many concurrent calls you want to allow, if going like for like you would need 12

 

[pmcook]

Just to help picture it in your head, there are no lines in PRI. You have one trunk and then voice paths within that trunk. Every number is a DID. SO you do all of your work in the incoming call route table. The IPO absolutely eats PRI alive and you can very easily do anything you want with the DIDs.

 

[dialtonebone]

I'd highly recommend getting an Avaya BP to work with you -- even if they aren't in your area this is all remote work unless you need help installing the PRI card. A PRI has a billion benefits over Centrex, and if the price is better than that's all the reason in the world to switch to a PRI off of POTS.

 

[96008n1]

Everyone, Thank You for the responses. I've been reading just about everything I can find on PRI and I think I have a better understanding now. I guess my mistake is that I was looking at it like POTS lines which it is not. If I'm understanding correctly it's essentially a single connection coming into my system which in this case will have 12 channels instead of the max of 23. In regards to number rollover/line hunt, if someone dials in in xxx-1000 and that number is already in use it will automatically look for the next open channel and go to it and so on. On my side I will need to do some magic with the incoming call route and have it send those calls onto a hunt group. If I've got this wrong please let me know.

If I'm correct on the above how would I go about ensuring that these calls wouldn't automatically roll to one of the private line channels on the IP Office (I'm assuming I would do this thru incoming call routes based on the incoming call number). To me it seems that if someone dials xxx-1000 it would keep rolling to the next channel until someone picks up or the caller gives up and hangs up. I'm needing someway to ensure that if someone dials xxx-1000 it won't tie up more than six incoming channels since I would be using the other 6 channels as direct inward dials. If anyone has a config example they would be willing to share I would greatly appreciate it. I'm hoping that our Superintendent will let me contract with our original Avaya install contractor and have them on site to help me thru my first initial install since I will be next year rolling this out at another 7 locations. However I'm trying to plan ahead just in case since most of the time I usually just get something dropped on my desk and asked to make it work (joys of working for a school system).

 

[Phone9uy]

If someone calls into a number associated with your PRI it will only tie up one channel. It does not matter how many desk phones are being rung, you're still only using the one channel(assuming of course you're not forwarding any of those phones to an external number, that would use an extra channel).

You need to do a little more reading on PRIs. Just because you assign a DID, does not mean that it is permanently attached to that channel. So you don;t have to "reserve" any channels for DIDs. The basic rule of thumb we use is 1 channel to every 4 users sitting at a phone, so with 12 channels you should be able to accommodate 48 users. Of course if you have a lot of remote workers or heavy call volume then the ratio needs to be adjusted.

 

[dialtonebone]

12 Channels -- you'll need a PRI license to open up additional ports on the PRI.

 

[96008n1]

Ok after more reading and research, I think I may have found the answer to my question. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. The way I see to keep more than 6 channels from being tied up on the incoming call would be to first setup the incoming call routing for the incoming number (xxx-1000 main number) to forward to a hunt group then on the hunt group enable call queueing with a max depth of 6. From what I have read when the queue becomes full the next call will receive a busy signal. Again I greatly appreciate everyones responses and patience with my rookie questions about telcom.

 

[tlpeter]

That is a way to do it indeed.
Be aware that if you have pots line now that you will need a PRI card.
This card comes with 8 channels by default and needs licenses to get more channels.
And please think of the future and do not use line appearances but call appearances

BAZINGA!

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

 

[96008n1]

Thankfully when we bought this sites IPOffice I went ahead and told the vendor that we need to have a PRI card with 23 channels available, so I'm good on the licenses for it. I do love the new business model vendors are going with, buy our system then buy our propriety card and then in order to use our card buy licenses to use on our system for our card. I really get a kick out of questioning my Avaya rep about their licensing model especially coming from the network side of advanced routing licenses and wireless access point licenses. LOL

I'm assuming when you say call appearance you are referring to having multiple intercom buttons.

 

[pmcook]

Just get more PRI channels. Some CLECS charge the same for 12 as 23. The whole point of having that many channels is so you never get busy signals. A DID is not a reservation it is a route. That rout could use channel 1,2 or 22 or 14 or whatever. The IPO just uses whatever is free when the call is routed. It is a pathway.