Using ASDI Phones like Powertouch 390 2

[joga]

Has anyone used ASDI analog phones with the merlin magix system. If you have do you know anyone who has developed scripts for these phones for the Merlin Magix system. I have about 8 phones and am wondering whether to keep them and use them or sell them back again.

A little bit about our experience

We just went from a Talkswitch system to a Merlin Magix system purchased on Ebay. The Merlin Magix system is goofy at best, We programmed it ourselves and it is amazing how little information is in the manuals available on the Avaya website.

But all is well it works and we have a 12 x 60 system with 6 port voice mail for less than 3.5 K. The voicemail prompts are horrible and add/deletions are not too bad.

Will not reccomend this system to anyone though.

 

[GoKings]

What is your application for the ASDI phones?

...And please help me understand in greater deatil how you can criticize a system that you know nothing about and programmed yourself. It's no Definity, but it is a very reliable and capable system for the price and capacity. And it's easy to find support.

 

[joga]

Well the application is pretty basic for the ADSI phones is pretty simple. program a button for access to voicemail, program a button for conference, forward etc. and submenus below these functions

I am not criticizing the reliability and capability of the system. What I think are extremely poor are the interfaces to program it and the documentation that is openly available.

For a system that was introduced in the late 90s to program a system by a 2400 baud serial port is poor. With this kind of stuff no wonder Avaya is struggling to survive. WINSPM is also still very basic we still need to use standard SPM for many things.

As for me programming it myself, we really want very basic functionality and we program for a living and this really was not difficult once we figured out the terminology. It was just frustrating and slow.

If they had a Ethernet port on the processor and a web driven interface to program it similar to what is available on even common $20 routers it would have been much faster and easier. I think that this is now the trend on many PC based phone systems.

The prompts for the voicemail system are downright weird. More than half our company has stopped by to tell me how strange they were and to ask me if I could change them.

 

[GoKings]

Typically those sets have a button labeled "program". With the station idle, press "program" then the button you wish to program, dial the code or number that button should speed dial, then press "program" again. There are multiple flavors of these phones, I believe, so I am not sure if I have helped.

In regards to your comments above, I can appreciate your concerns. However, I think you are comparing apples to oranges. I can guess by your comments that your background is probably more data-centric than voice. That's fine, but you can't compare a PC-based system to a TDM system. This system was not introduced in the late 90's, rather in the early 80's. It was designed for migration and to keep customers with AT&T/Lucent/Avaya. The single largest cost in any system is typically the phones and these have largely been able migrate through most upgrades from the old Merlin II systems.

The 2400 baud modem is ridiculous and I am surprised that they have not changed that, but really, when connected remotely, the interface doesn't require much more speed in order to function real time.

As far as the vm prompts, the interface used is Audix. This is one of the first vm interfaces created in voice mail technology. It may be strange when changing from another interface, but having installed many brands of vm, I have yet to find a customer that does not complain about change. Changing customers from Audix to Aria or Serenade to Strata vm interfaces is always different and doesn't make sense until a qualified trainer teaches the logic of the system to the end-users.

 

[joga]

Will give it a shot.

Yes our background is more data-centric and not voice centric.
Have a engineering degree in telecommunications though which did not help me in this case ;-).

I thought that this was a new system with the first release in 1999 though now I realize that it simply the old Legend system in a newer form factor and may be better integration with voice mail.

I also wanted to thank you and the many other posters helping people out. I have had more help from this board than all the other documentation put together.

 

[merlinman]

Just a small overview of some things in the Audix interface to hope it makes sense:

*8 (*T) for TRANSER
*7 (*R) for REMOTE or REDO (As in going back a step)
*3 (*D) for DELETE

But alas, as I tell the folks I train after a new install of one of these, "Just listen to her, (Audix Annie) she will tell you what to do....."

I hope this helps