Remote Working Options

To our valued customers: 

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak many of you have been inquiring about your options to have employees work remotely. We understand this need and are doing everything we can to ensure that we can accommodate everyone as quickly as possible. Please understand that we support customers in many different types of businesses.  While all our customers are important to us, we must prioritize these requests.  Our senior living facilities, retirement communities, medical offices, medical transportation services, hospitals, are being given the highest priority at this time. 

The following options may be available to you and may be based on the firmware version your PBX is on, licensing on your PBX, as well as your network infrastructure.  Please also keep in mind that with some of the options below a firmware upgrade may be needed to older systems and would require some additional time to complete. 

Forwarding/Twinning:

This option would be the first and most immediate option for your users. If your Avaya IP Office PBX is release 7 or higher, there is no licensing needed and there is just some minor programming involved. This is basically like call forwarding and will send the call to the user’s cell phone or home phone. When the call is answered on the cell phone, the user does have the ability to transfer the call by dialing ** followed by the extension they wish to transfer the call to. That would be the only call handling available for the call. This is for inbound calls only. This is something simple and we can provide the basic programming changes for you or you may be able to perform them yourself, but we would be happy to assist you if needed.

 Remote IP Phone:

Setting up an IP Phone for the user to work from home is another option. This will give them all the capabilities on the phone they would have sitting at their desk in the office. This option is also dependent on the firmware version the system is on, licensing, network infrastructure, and hardware on the PBX. This option can take some time to set up and will require a discussion on how it will be implemented with your IT staff or vendor.

 Softphone/OneX/Equinox/IX Workplace:

The Softphone option would be a softphone client that would be installed on a laptop or PC where the user can make and receive calls on. They would need a connection back to the office such as a VPN client for this option to work.

 OneX/Equinox/IX Workplace, these are all the same just named differently based on the firmware level of the PBX. This will give the user the softphone option (with no need for a vpn client) as well as a mobile client they can install on their cell phone so they can make and receive calls as if they were in their office.

 Like the remote IP Phone setup, all these options are dependent on the firmware version the system is on, licensing, network infrastructure, and hardware on the PBX. This option can possibly take the most amount of time to set up and will require a discussion on how it will be setup with your IT staff or vendor. It may also require the setup of a fully resolvable FQDN that your IT staff would setup.

Thank you for your understanding during these uncertain times.  If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to us directly or respond back to this email. Please stay safe!

Blue Wire Communications