VMPro Upgrade Warning 3

[Gunnaro]

I found a few critical bugs in the latest releases of the VMPro (8.1.9704.0 + 9.0.4.0.18)

Upgrading might destroy one or more of your Generic actions.
In particular this applies to the GET and SET functions for Users and Hunt Groups.
(DND, Absence, VM status, etc.)

Test performed on 11 different servers + 2 PC's (Win 2K8, Win 2K3, Win 7)
Both upgrades and new installs had bugs.

Kind regards

Gunnar
__________________________________________________________________
Hippos have bad eyesight, but considering their weight, it’s hardly their problem

 

[Westi]

!!! Avaya please read this and fix it !!!!

Star for you Gunnar for a lot of work testing this.

Maybe Avaya should test before they bring out new releases, that would be a new concept for them or one that should be re-introduced


Joe W.

FHandw, ACSS (SME), ACIS (SME)


“This is the end of the world, make sure to buy your T-shirt before it is too late"
Original expression of my daughter

 

[tlpeter]

Buy iposs and raise it as a bug.
Easy fix and easy money for Avaya

BAZINGA!

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

 

[Westi]

The IPOSS is nice if you have it but I wonder why car dealers give you a warranty and fix problems even 5 years down the road if it is a manufacturing problem and Avaya wants money to fix THEIR problems they have created 3 months down the road. They give you hardware warranty but nothing for software which is far more likely to be faulty.
Also why do the BP's need to spend time, and therefore money, to fix Avaya's shortcomings (UCM) and then say it is the BP's problem to keep the customers happy.
Avaya screwed up the UCM not once so every UCM had to be patched 3 times to make it finally work and no word to give the BP's any money back to have a tech drive and spend 1 to 2 hours each time. That is a lot of money for some companies.
I know that some companies sell rather a different brand now because you install it and it works and don't have to go back and spend an extra 2,3,4,5 or more hours to finally have it stable. 5 hours of labour takes away a lot of profit when you sell a product that has not a big margin any more because everybody and their mother is selling it now. You can buy IPO's online and get it really cheap because they don't have to keep up their training and certs to install it. So customers are complaining that the pricing is too high if you ask them to pay you with a 20% margin and they can buy it cheaper online than Avaya sells it to the BP's.

Avaya needs to have a better testing plan as it cannot be that basic things are not being tested.
I understand that you cannot test for all eventualities but we are talking basic functions. I understand that the system goes nuts if weird things happen but again this is basic stuff.
Maybe they should have BP's develop a test plan for them as we are frontline with functions and customers and know better what customers actually use than Avaya and their "head in the cloud" mentality

Joe W.

FHandw, ACSS (SME), ACIS (SME)


“This is the end of the world, make sure to buy your T-shirt before it is too late"
Original expression of my daughter

 

[intrigrant]

We do Panasonic as well and it is the same story ( almost ) the only big difference is that with Avaya you can get support if you pay for it, Panasonic doesn't have such a organisation and the resellers just have to wait and see if Panasonic brings a fix.

 

[Westi]

Wow that sucks even worse.

So you can chose between BAD and WORSE ???

Joe W.

FHandw, ACSS (SME), ACIS (SME)


“This is the end of the world, make sure to buy your T-shirt before it is too late"
Original expression of my daughter

 

[Gunnaro]

Purchase upgrade license => Expect software to be fully functional, or fixed for free.

They can take their IPOSS and shove it!
There's no chance in Hell that I'll give them a VPN tube into my customers systems.

Westi:
I was about to make the same comparison. Car manufacturers learnt their lesson after the Ford Pinto.
Any design flaw, they take the car in for free upgrade.

The auto equivalent to IPOSS would be that you get a free rental car when picking up you car at home.

I assume the upgrade junkies have gone off and installed the latest SP's, should be an outcry soon.

Kind regards

Gunnar
__________________________________________________________________
Hippos have bad eyesight, but considering their weight, it’s hardly their problem

 

[mattKnight]

I hear the pain...

The only option is to make your commercial team feed this back in via the account manager route.

Avaya (in the UK) have significantly increased their account management team - and these are direct customer facing. Get your customers to squeeze these account managers - make tem sit in meetings with unhappy customers - takes the heat of you too!. In short make the "shiny shoed salesdroids" feel the pain, only then will things begin to change (and even the maybe not)

Take Care

Matt
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.
My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.

 

[amriddle01]

Account Manager? Avaya couldn't tell you the name of our account manager, neither could I, because we don't have one. We have nobody this side of our distributers in direct (or indirect for that matter) contact with us. Basically if your company also sells CM you may get an ACM, otherwise no. No matter how much IPO you sell

 

[crumthwacket]

They can take their IPOSS and shove it!
There's no chance in Hell that I'll give them a VPN tube into my customers systems.

True dat!

There's too many sales people and too few engineers at Avaya these days.

 

[tlpeter]

Then you do not know how it works
You can turn it off, it is an option not a prerequisite.

BAZINGA!

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

 

[Gunnaro]

Yes of course you can kill the vpn connection.
It was meant as a side note.

Let me rephrase that:
They can take their IPOSS and shove it!
(And there's no chance in Hell that I'll give them a VPN tube into my customers systems.)

Kind regards

Gunnar
__________________________________________________________________
Hippos have bad eyesight, but considering their weight, it’s hardly their problem

 

[CarGoSki]

Nice rant Westi.

I have yet to see an Avaya IPOSS vpn connection that works.
Avaya VPN SSA errors > 999
All fail and a little bird told me that none work.

 

[Westi]

I have in my old company set up 3 customer with IPOSS but never bothered to set their VPN up

sometimes I just can't help and start babbling uncontrollably with what bugs me (see above rant ;-))

Joe W.

FHandw, ACSS (SME), ACIS (SME)


“This is the end of the world, make sure to buy your T-shirt before it is too late"
Original expression of my daughter

 

[tnestel]

This is all very interesting. I thought my issues w/Avaya were because I work for a very small company. Sounds like even the big dogs have these issues!

 

[DrDrayAvaya]

same down under with account managers @Matt Knight... suddenly we have a presence, and there are 3 of em! they even have an office in our City/Country. there's approx 4.4 mil people in our whole country so nothing too flash. wonder if it's a global strategy to take some responsibility and drive sales/ support from within? dwindling resellers/ disgruntled? we've invested fairly heavily in the brand, after cutting away other brands, NEC, Panasonic, Aria. they're all as bad tbh. perhaps worse... i must admit, apart from the pile of dead 1608's stuck in reboot, unable to boot their image, and the ATM combo cards, and the UC110's, and the ...... hardware has been pretty good. I have had whole Aria/Samsung systems fried out of the box, that's pretty funny.. til smoke comes out. NEC/ Panasonic, you'll be hard pressed to see anything hardware related? but software is crap, and 5 years behind. very conservative/safe practise. must be same world over surely?

 

[Westi]

I am not sure what I would prefer, hardware OK but not the newest features and working or Avaya

Actually I work on the IPO since 2003 so I have gotten used to a lot and made it through some rough patches with their releases (think of R4.0 disaster hahaha)but what starts to really annoy me is the mentality that they have to get marketing to dictate what the customer need and walking over corpses of BP's to get to it.
They are always very helpful if you get someone on the line and they all claim to be out for your benefit but that is the lower and middle management as soon as you get higher you have no connection and no response because they just don't seem to care. Sell, Sell, Sell seems to be the word of the decade. If you don't sell then you are not of interest for them and even if you sell like mad it has to be CM with their high priced items.
I think as soon as the server edition catches on they will up the licensing for that to get closer to CM pricing and then offer discounts for upgrades because that is then just a small step away and they have you in the bag.

Joe W.

FHandw, ACSS (SME), ACIS (SME)


“This is the end of the world, make sure to buy your T-shirt before it is too late"
Original expression of my daughter

 

[amriddle01]

The newest features aren't "new" or really features, they tend to be new bits of licenced software or servers etc. And they are still missing features other systems have had for 8 or 9 years.
Ditch all the One-x Preferred and all that unified/cloud type of bollocks....which never sold a single system for us. Get what you have working, catch up with the old Nortel/Mitel features the system still can't do and that will sell systems...simple

 

[Gunnaro]

In my opinion retiring PhoneManager (Pro) is the single biggest mistake they've done the 5 years
So far none of my customers have welcomed One-X portal.

Fancy: No
Reliable: Yes
User friendly: Yes

I reckon this is a rant & rave thread now.

Kind regards

Gunnar
__________________________________________________________________
Hippos have bad eyesight, but considering their weight, it’s hardly their problem

 

[amriddle01]

It's good for Avaya to see what we really think, not just what the BP's that happily dance to their tune and hang on their every word tell them