Mitel opinions wanted from a real perspective

[olbs]

Good evening all,

The company I work for are looking into changing our PBX dealership to Mitel, 3300's. We went on a sales demo for a few hours, going over all the major sections of the system and pricing.

It all seems well and good but I'm after more technical personal opinions on the system, as well as any comparisons with other systems on the market in terms of programming and setup. We loved the idea of redundant power supplies and CPU's, RAID array, native MS OCS and Exchange integration, but only 1 routable LAN interface(and no redudant LAN?)

Or do the different models have differing LAN/WAN infrastructure? Can it do VLAN trunking or subinterfaces? I can see many applications where 1 routable LAN won't cut it.

We had a simple look at the programming and to be honest I wasn't all that impressed. It looked to have a very traditional key system layout.

How flexible is the programming in these things? Again, any comparisons in programming ease and flexibility with other systems? Any macroing or similar functionality (user profiles, time of day config changes)?

How configurable are things like ARS, incoming call routing, user profiles, digit translation?

How powerful are the Auto Attendants and voicemail?

One section that really concerned me was the ability to only have 3 modes (Day, Night 1 and 2), also seen mention on forums that the incoming call routing isn't that great (No routing on caller ID, strong need for extensions to match incoming DID).

What are the best and worst things about working on these things?

Any opinions would be great and muchly appreciated. We're just trying to do our homework as thoroughly as possible because this thing does have quite a few great points going for it. Its just hard for us to get personal opinions on the technical side of the system since all our contacts are Mitel employees.

 

[kwbMitel]

Lots Of Questions

The 3300MXe has DUAL LAN PORTs with Spanning tree capability

Not sure what you mean or want via VLAN Trunking and sub-interfaces. The 3300 is not a router. It is a phone system. You only want voice related traffic.

The programming on the 3300 is better than most. Lots of areas for copying and range programming. Import and export from .csv files. I havent found an interface better. Your criticism that it looks like a keys system is actually a compliment in my opinion. Who wouldn't want the simplicity of key system programming combined with PBX functionality.

Very flexible programming. Needs some expertise to get the best out of the system. Macro'ing via import of .csv files. Scheduled changes requires add-on application Enterprise Manager and OPSMan. The scheduled application name says it all. TASMAC "the amazing scheduled moves adds changes"

ARS Very flexible
User profiles - ??? Not sure what you mean
Incoming call routing - Flexible
Digit translation - Not the best but workable using speed dial tables.

Auto-Attendant via Embedded mail is adequate. External VM's such as 6510 or Nupoint are top of the line.

3 Night modes are adequate for global switching. Forwarding can be used for specific instances (manually activated)
Also Tenanting allows night modes per tenant/ up to 64 tenants so you really have 192 night modes.

the 3300 by inself will not route on inbound caller ID. Add on applications and external voicemails can help if this is required.

Extensions matching DID's is prefered but can be overcome if necessary by speed call tables or global digit manipulation.

Caveat: I am very Mitel Biased and most that you find in this forum will be the same. We all have personal pet peeves against the product but overall Mitel is better than most.

P.S.
Virtually all of my customers manage their own systems after a minimum of training.


















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Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[bcarnot]

I agree with the statements above. Very flexible. The 3 - modes can be used for many different features. If you are going to use the modes for "out of the typical box" situations, I strongly suggest having a superconsole.

I have my Day mode = receptionist answering, Night 1 = Overhead paging and Night 2 = Re-routing to another site. All mode changes are easily managed through the superconsole, no need to tell end users what the access codes are.

Re-routing and forwarding certainly are easier to manage if you are using a vmail system.

OPSman is key for multiple site management.

 

[olbs]

User profiles - ??? Not sure what you mean"

As in setting up one set of programming (Digit translation, button layout, handset capabilities, ARS, restrictions that apply in programs etc) per user group (One for reception, one for ACD agents, one for bosses etc) then setting which users are part of which profile.

"Caveat: I am very Mitel Biased and most that you find in this forum will be the same. We all have personal pet peeves against the product but overall Mitel is better than most."

These are the things we want to hear, the pre-sales guy we talked to gave us all the great things on the system. Mind elaborating on these personal problems with the system, however small?

 

[paterson]

The user profiles are very basic. There are 3 types of programming tools.

First tool is for individual users to make changes on their sets only. I have never used or set up this access for any customer.

Second tool is for an administrator to make some system and some user programming changes. Some customers use it, but it is really basic. Stuff like name changes, system speed dials, time and date, some button programming. I personally don't like it.

Third tool is total system programming access. Most of my customers ask for this access. I give it to them with the caveat of "you break it and you pay to have us fix it regardless of any maintenance agreement".

None of these tools are adjustable currently. I say currently because I keep hearing rumblings that Mitel has listened to the masses (techs/dealers) and will introduce a way to allow/disallow users from reading/changing specific programming forms. This ability is a function of the SX2000 programming, which the 3300 is based on, but this ability was removed with the introduction of the 3300.


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[kwbMitel]

User Profiles: I would call them Templates based on your decription. There are now Templates Per-se in the 3300 that function the way you describe. A properly designed system will have pre-configured Classes of Service and Classes of retriction that are easily assigned to cover a wide variety of users.

That being said, with an optional management tool (enterprise Manager/OPSman) it is possible to create Templates that configure everything on the phone (very cool when used right)

Pet Peeves:
No automatic dial 9 for modems and Faxes
Flexible Outbound Caller Name was added only recently but still has limitations.

Strengths
Amazing growth potential.
Networking multisites almost seemless
Very easy to learn programming interface
On board help files 99% of what you need

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Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[techygurl]

I will respond as an end-user... 2 years ago we installed the 3300ICP on one site with about 20 users. The rest of the users stayed with the old SX200. Within 2 months, we were up to 100IP users and are now almost dispensed with the old SX200.

Within one week, I was fully versed on the system which is incredibly simple to use: everything from adding licenses, checking capacities, configuring sets & templates and troubleshooting.

Now we have 4 sites - all seamless - all IP. Everything is managed through EM & Ops.

The only complaint I would have about the 3300, is that it does not adjust automatically for Daylight Savings Time. When I brought it up at the EM/Ops manager training, Mitel wasn't even aware of it (???). Apprently they're working on this now.

 

[nytalkin]

The Daylight Savings time issue is resolved in EMGR/OPMAN. On managed nodes properties check the box asking is daylight time is observed and assure that time sycronisation is on for all managed nodes.

 

[TheMitelGuy]

In regards to the TIME/DATE issue above, it is on the road map for the ICP to do it, itself.

 

[techygurl]

nytalkin - thanks for the info but I have looked on each of my nodes in EM and there is no indication of DST anywhere.


TheMitelGuy - any ETA on the subject?

 

[paterson]

There is nothing in EM. The way to change time is through OPSMan. There is a schedulable task in there to use the time on the OPSMan server to update the time on each system/node.

Actually, if I remember correctly, there is a spot in EM to indicate the time zone the node is in. Been a bit since I set up a node, anyone else remeber where it is?


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[techygurl]

Paterson... thanks for the response. I am not looking to change the time though, I am looking to have the system do the DST update itself. My time synchs on a daily basis for all 4 sites/systems. I am just trying to avoid having to log in on Sunday morning to update Daylight Savings Time on all my sites manually. I have not yet found anything either in any help files to indicate the DST time change.

 

[kwbMitel]

Techygurl,

If the Eman/Ops server is setup to timesynch with a network or internet server it will set the correct time on your 3300 systems at whatever time you designate. (Daily for example)

No maintenace required.

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Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.