Posted by sutusdave in Feature Highlights on February 11th, 2010
Hi everyone,
Some of the crew in Sutus Support mentioned that asking about integrating a Free/Busy calendar from Outlook was a popular topic, so I decided to do some research. There’s a good article in the Help files, but why go there when you are already here?
First of all, a free/busy calendar is not just a calendar for one person. It is a calendar that combines many schedules and displays them on one page. This really saves time when you are booking appointments or scheduling team meetings, to name but two examples. Essentially, when a person publishes their Outlook calendar to the Business Central, that schedule information becomes available to other employees.
Enough of the talk, Dave. How do we do this? Well, if you’ve used the BC200′s Install Wizard, your Outlook calendar is already ready to use. If you haven’t, or you have recently upgraded your systems, or you just want to know what’s happening under the hood, read on.
These instructions may not be exact if you’re using a different version of Outlook. Here is what to do if you’re using Outlook 2003. (This is all in the BC200 Help files, if you get stuck.)
Now, your Outlook calendar appointments will be visible to other people when they are scheduling appointments in their Outlook. Be careful, though – the Business Central does not support calendar sharing, which is when you can see other people’s calendar information in your own calendar.
It’s hard to be excited about a calendar, I know, but it’s simple to see how this can increase efficiency around the office. I’ll write again next week, as I see that I’m free at 4:30…
-Dave.
Posted by sutusdave in Feature Highlights on January 14th, 2010
Hi everyone,
I want my customers to get a hold of my people easily. Isn’t it frustrating to have to remember two or three business phone numbers just to talk to one person? Get a competitive edge and make your people easy to contact by optimizing your Call Flow.
Case 1 – The Mobile Employee
Jim, our service tech, usually works offsite, but in town. He starts and ends his day at the office, so he needs to be contactable, but he doesn’t want to give out his cell numbers to clients. When somebody calls Jim’s extension, the BC200 will ring his desk phone first, in case he is in the office, and then forward the call to his cell phone using an external line.
Case 2 – He’s Overseas
Daniel, our traveling sales agent, is often out of the country, and he’d like to have an ‘office phone’ while overseas. Calling his extension here will ring his desk phone and his softphone (communications software that acts like a telephone) at the same time. If he doesn’t answer, the caller will be directed to the Auto-Attendant. The caller will think he is in the office down the street, but he’ll really be in Germany, connected to our BC200 with a VPN! As a bonus, the VPN allows him secure access to his email, the internet connection in the office, shared documents, and even the office printer.
Case 3 – Her desk is here, but she works over there…
Renata is a designer, but she spends a lot of time collaborating with Jean in the production department. She needs to be available wherever she is. Here, the BC200 will direct the incoming call to Renata’s desk phone, then ring Jean’s phone in the engineering department, and then terminate the call back at Renata’s voicemail.
Case 4 – Like a Pager
Dr. Beesie doesn’t want to take non-emergency calls while in the clinic, but she wants to get messages. In this case, the BC200 doesn’t ring a phone – it just terminates the call at her voicemail. The good doctor can then return her calls as time permits. (Using the last tip, we could forward the notification emails to her cell phone… just to give you a few ideas!)
Case 5 – Anyone Will Do
Our tech support department has many workers – Bill, Steve, and Eric, to name just three – and they can all help our clients. Someone calling Bill will ring his desk phone, then to all the phones in the Tech Support shared workspace, and then to the voicemail for the tech support shared workspace.
Set It Up.
Here’s how to do it. Call flows are editable under the Edit Workspace tab – just double click the workspace name, select Phone Service, and choose Incoming Call Flow. We can have up to three sequential destinations for an incoming call. Each destination can be a physical phone, a softphone, a forwarding number, a voice mailbox, or the Auto-Attendant. Just start at the top of the page and work down, and that’s the order the BC200 will follow when it receives a call.
So, what’s the secret? There really isn’t one. We need to remember that the BC200 frees us from the old idea that ‘each phone has one extension number, and that’s that.’ Just give your clients one extension, and let the BC200 and your Call Flow keep you in touch wherever you are! Have any questions? Just call me at the office, and I’ll be there… or will I?
-Dave.
Posted by sutusdave in 3rd party products, Feature Highlights on December 7th, 2009
Hi there,
Wouldn’t it be convenient to get a text message whenever a voice mail was left for you at work?
One of our sales guys was out of the office but on the phone a lot, and he couldn’t get his email notifications of voice messages at the office. Normally he would just check his email on a smartphone, but he doesn’t have a data package! Here’s a way around that situation.
Your BC200 emails you whenever you get a voicemail – mine goes to my Gmail account. I set up a filter that says “If the subject contains ‘voicemail,’ forward it to ‘myphonenumber@mycellcarrier.com.’ It’s pretty simple – here’s the whole process:
Data packages cost money, but most cell companies offer free incoming SMS messages.
I hope this little tip helps you make the most of your BC200. Until next time,
- Dave.
Posted by sutusdave in Feature Highlights on October 20th, 2009
Hi everyone,
I was speaking with the Sutus support team, and they mentioned that there is sometimes confusion about what the default Reception workspace is for, why it is included, and how it can be used effectively.
The Reception workspace, for the most part, is like all other shared workspaces: it allows its members to share access to files, emails and phone calls. Also, all members of Reception can configure the behavior of that shared workspace; what happens when someone calls (the incoming call flow) or when someone emails reception (email forwards/alias). Reception has two other benefits that normal shared workspaces do not have:
Now that we have an idea of why and how the Reception shared workspace is used by the company, we should look at how shared workspaces help administrators manage their system. The first and foremost benefit is that it allows for role-based configuration. For most companies, it does not matter which employee is currently acting as the receptionist. Calls and emails will normally be handled in the same way by all receptionists.
Imagine, for example, that your receptionist, Bob, is leaving the company and will be replaced by a new employee, whom we will call Jill. By using the Reception shared workspace to handle the role of the receptionist, all you will need to do is:
However, if the Reception shared workspace was not being used, the administrator would need to:
Ouch. That is a lot of work.
In the second example, the role of reception was attached to a personal workspace. Moving this role to a new personal workspace requires a lot of customized configuration. In the first example, the role of the reception is attached to a shared workspace. This means that just the members change, not the workspace configuration! Jill will automatically have access to all of the reception email, files and phone calls that Bob had received during his time as the receptionist.
Using a shared workspace to manage roles applies to other positions in your office such as support, sales or accounting. By creating shared workspaces to handle each role, employees (personal workspaces) can move between roles and even share multiple roles.
The other benefit for installers is that all incoming calls go to a known place by default. This means that there is no configuration required if a new GW310 PSTN gateway or VoIP provider is added to the system. This is because the default behavior is to direct all of the phone lines to Reception’s incoming call flow. This makes new equipment installation easier and faster by reducing the number of configuration steps required.
That’s pretty much it for this week. Shared workspaces, in particular the Reception shared workspace, are pretty powerful tools. They can simplify the administration and day to day usage of your Business Central.
-Dave.
Posted by sutusdave in Uncategorized on October 2nd, 2009
Hi Sutus users,
I really enjoy working from home. It’s relaxing, comfortable, and I don’t have to commute! However, I always had to remember to bring home a laptop and any files I needed. What if I forget one of them? Worse still, what if the laptop is stolen and my data is lost or compromised? Your BC200 can help you out. It’s not a new feature, but it really is a useful one. I’m talking about a Virtual Private Network, which is a simple way to connect to the office network from anywhere with an Internet connection. It takes just a few steps to set up, too. Open Business Central Manager, and click on Remote Office Access. Follow the instructions to set up either a PPTP or IPsec VPN. I’m going to recommend the ‘Help’ files this time, rather than have you follow my instructions. Just click the ‘Learn More…’ BUTTONS if you’re not sure what is right.
Here are some creative uses for a VPN, some that you may not have heard of:
So there you have it. It’s not much work to set up, but it really does open up a lot of connectivity possibilities. I’m going to leave it there for this week.
-Dave.
(P.S. – I’m not in my office while I write this!)
Hi Sutus users,
We’ve just started our Webmail beta trial, and we’re pleased to offer this opportunity to try out our new service. If you’re interested in a free, secure, Sutus-branded webmail address, head on over to the sign-up page.
Posted by sutusdave in Feature Highlights on September 9th, 2009
Hi there.
Today I want to talk about one of the receptionist/executive assistant features of the Business Central: Workspace Monitoring.
Since my receptionist, James, wanted a big phone with lots of buttons, I got him the colour Polycom IP 670. It has a big screen, 6 line buttons and has support for up to 42 more buttons with expansion modules. At first I was concerned about having to configure the beast, but then I remembered that the Sutus does device detection and configuration automatically, so I gave it a shot.
Adding the phone was easy:
The Business Central 200 knows what each Polycom phone looks like, and features you can change are highlighted when you mouse over them. Click on ‘Configure Phone Buttons…’ and you’ll see the choices that are available for each line button. James needs to call the marketing staff many times a day, so a speed dial button will make his life easier. He also needs to know when staff are available to take calls. Enter Speed Dial and Workspace Monitoring.
This service offers one-touch calling to a local extension, and it also lets us know if any other phone in the workspace is in use. Because most of our calls are for the three people in marketing, it’s really helpful to be able to see who in that department is available to take calls. Just looking at the screen of the Model 670 shows the status of all their phones. If someone is in a meeting or away from their desk, then can hit the ‘do not disturb’ button. This makes them show to James as busy, so he knows that they’re not available at the moment.
With the Model 670, this is really simple. There are 6 assignable buttons, which allows for a lot of flexibility. I set it up like this:
The top two buttons are the two call appearances, the next three are for our marketing team – Vivian, Michiko, and Ryan – and the last button connects to Call Park and Unpark. Now James can see who is on the phone or available to take calls, and it also allows him to see if parked calls for other team members are being picked up in a timely manner.
Should we need more control in the future, the Model 670 also has the ability to work with up to 3 expansion modules. They are called sidecars, and each sidecar adds 14 configurable buttons with a display showing their function and status. Each button can be assigned independently of the others, just like those on the phone.
That’s it – it actually took longer to type this out than it took to configure the BC200!
Posted by sutusdave in Feature Highlights on August 26th, 2009
Talking with receptionists can give a lot of information about how to configure a Business Central 200 for optimum usage. Something that I found to be quite flexible is the Call Park and Retrieve feature. There are two main reasons to use call parking, also called system hold, instead of local hold.
When a customer calls the office, the receptionist greets them and asks who they’d like to speak to. They then put the customer on local hold, notify the intended recipient, and connect the call to the recipient. This is the traditional method, and as you can see, it’s quite labour-intensive. It requires the recipient to be at their normal telephone extension and available for the call, it requires the receptionist to shepherd the call through various phone numbers, and only the receptionist can connect the call to the recipient. Local hold can only be cancelled by the phone that initiated it!
However, Sutus has simplified this procedure with their implementation of call parking. The receptionist can park the call while they page the recipient. The recipient can then unpark the call from any convenient phone. They recipient can be near any phone in the company, and the receptionist doesn’t need to make the connection. Paging is easy, too: “Accounting, call in stall one, please!”
There’s another common scenario that really makes call park stand out. Imagine that you’re at your desk when you receive a call. Perhaps this call is private, or involves personal information. You don’t want to have this conversation where your colleagues can listen in, so you move to a private conference room. Park the call and find an empty conference room. Unpark the call when you arrive, and have your conversation in peace. Imagine the past – put the call on hold, find an empty conference room, go back to your desk and transfer the call, run to the conference room and take the call. Two trips to the conference room, plus a longer time on hold for the caller – the Business Central helps us with a win-win solution.
In addition, when the receptionist puts people on hold, there’s no way of seeing a list of the callers, which receptionist put them on hold, or their destinations. With the Call Park feature, any Polycom IP phone can display the list of parked calls, with their source number, destination number, and who the call was parked by as well.
Call Parking is a simple feature, to be sure, but it has strong advantages over the way putting calls on hold used to be done. Efficient, convenient, and effective.
- Dave.
We shot a quick video of Business Central that focuses on how easy it is for a small business or their service provider to setup and configure the basic features.
It starts with unpacking the boxes, plugging in the cables, and running through parts of the setup wizard. We also highlight our Polycom phone setup interface (which is in the new software – version 1.6.3 – that is due to be released in a couple weeks!) that we think is a first of its kind, how to change call flow and redirect incoming calls to external numbers.
[wpvideo xwmeIovr]
This is the first of many videos so keep an eye out for more!
Jon Paul Janze
Director, Product Management and Marketing