atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Need help with a better way to explain connectivity

Greetings.

I need help from you lot, the pbx installers, programmers and service techs, to come up with a better way to explain how my dialer/ivr interconnects with phone systems.

All day long I talk to IT managers, executive stakeholders and phone system vendors about what I need in the way of connectivity; about 80% of the time I get blank stares or confused head-scratching.


Let me explain my connectivity.

Predictive dialing should be straight forward - I have phone lines connected directly to the dialer from the CO - usually PRI - used for all outbound calling.
The phone system is connected to the dialer via a wink-start T1; this is a cross over cable between the dialer's T1 port and a T1 port on the phone system. This tie-line connection is set up in a trunk group accessible by the agent from their desk phone. The path is nailed up between the agent and the dialer for as long as they are logged in. When detecting a human answer the dialer connects the call to the open audio path that the agent established. Make sense?

It seems that the PBX techs I deal with more often than not have a hard time getting their head around the tie line between the dialer and the phone system - is there a better way to explain it from your perspective?

The second connections, which often causes the most problems at the time of install is inbound blending lines.

When an agent is logged onto the dialer taking outbound calls most often they are not going to be able to get calls from their ACD or auto-attendant without stopping the dialer - which defeats the purpose of a dialer. So we use inbound blending lines. In many cases the inbound calls enters the phone system, and through the phone system's routing/acd/auto-attendant determined that the call needs to be sent to the dialer to be handled by the agent who is logged on. There are two ways we do this - 1) use analog station ports set up into a hunt group which are connected to analog ports on the dialer, once in the dialer the caller can be prompted for an account number and then routed to an agent or to a auto payment dialogue. 2) the inbound call is sent over a tie line to the dialer - this is where problems start. On the bigger PBXs the DS1 cards can be set up to be line-side cards and all is well, but on the majority of phone system my customers have (key/hybrids) the DS1 card is only a trunk card which often means DISA and CoS programing needs to take place in order to transfer a call from one T1 out a second T1 - something many phone techs don't know about or understand. How do I explain this to them so that they understand what I need?
I an ideal world I would have the phone system's ACD use DNIS or user entered touch-tones to send the call to the dialer over a T1 tie line and pass me some type of DNIS for routing to agent groups or payment dialogues.

Ask any questions you think will help you understand what I am asking and please tell me if you think I need a better way to explain the connectivity I need or are there better questions to ask the phone vendor about the capabilities of the systems I connect to.

Thanks much!
Dave

Draw a picture. Use MicroSoft Visio and draw pictures for your various flow charts. Everything in the world is boxes and wires. Cities & roads. When a bridge is out---you have a connectivity problem. When the infrastructure of the box or city is not set up right (not programmed)--you have a problem within that box.

No??? JMHO. I draw pictures.

I do draw pictures with Visio.
You can check out two diagrams one simple and one a little more involved:
sample 1 https://www.dcwave.com/sample1.pdf
sample 2 https://www.dcwave.com/sample2.pdf

The physical connectivity is not hard to understand so much - its how they need to program the phone system.

I usually send a spec sheet with signaling and channel allocation, but there still seems to be a disconnect when explaining what and why something needs to be set up a certain way - specifically with the inbound blending ports.

Do you think I need to diagram the call flow for an inbound call routing through the PBX and out a T1 into the dialer as well?

Thanks
Dave

I have to agree with JWRacedog's response. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Perhaps a PowerPoint presentation that illustrates the expected call flow? It wouldn't hurt to throw in some telecom 101 information so that the participants aren't too intimidated. IVR and predictive dialers are items that many telecom people may never see in their entire career, so the more base-level information you can share, the better.

Nobody wants to admit that they don't have a clue, and most people in this business really know how to help. If you are able to warm them up with terminology and basic information that makes sense to them, they will adapt. I can't tell you how many times I've been presented with a "big word" expectation, thought to myself "huh?", and then realized that it's really no sweat at all. I think that my first experience was when I was asked to install an RJ71X jack.

It's all about the presentation because like you said, the concept is usually pretty simple.

The problem to me looks like you need a separate sheet explaining the programming for different systems this is integrated with. I have had vendors come in and sell the world only to find out this "wonderful" system has never been implemented behind a system like ours.

One took me three weeks and $11,000 (to turn on a feature) to get it to work. They then took my configurations and gave it to other Avaya customers for them to use to connect. Most vendors do not take the time to figure out "how" to program the switch and leave it to the customers. This is a large gray area. If you want to fill in the blanks, then work with your customers with different systems, and make it work. Then write up programming instructions and we will have it working and your off the the next project.

I have several vendors that do it this way, but not many. But the vendors I consider my "better" vendors know how to connect and trouble shoot their equipment connected to my Avaya system.

Here's my 2 cents worth.

Which different PBX Platforms and models have you successfully implemented this on?

Let's say the answer is:

Merlin Legend
Nortel Meridan
Toshiba XYZ
NEC ABC

How hard would it be to get a copy of the translations (programming) of those switches and make that available to the Techs that need to make it work at your next installation?

I think that would be a place to start and perhaps could save a problem or two.

You are right on the money merlinman. Screen shots would also be a major help. On anything that has an IP interface it would be a simple copy and paste to a word doc. Not old versions of software, but something at least close to being new.

Another problem is terminology. While it may be the same thing or feature say on a Nortel and Avaya, Nortel systems call it this and Avaya calls it something else. Thats where you are going to have to work with the different vendors and put their terminology in your programming instructions.

Mike has a good point. The trouble seems to be centered in the PBX programming.

You might have the answers in your present customer database. How many use Avaya PBXs, Nortel PBXs, Mitel PBXs?? Etc.

From the PDFs, it looks like you need a PBX to have 3 slots and 3 T-1 cards. That should narrow down the systems that your equipment can be integrated with.

If you first work with one PBX (with the same levels of software)---there should be some common programming. Maybe how the 3 T-1 slots are configured, hunt groups, how trunks are set up--etc etc.

Documentation is always a problem to begin with ---but after you do it, it's a good deal for everyone.

Nice pictures! They really helped.

You have:
1) an outbound PRI dedicated to the Dialer
2) PRI for the PBX (Office Use/DIDs)
3) Tie Line: PBX<---->Dialer (Agent Access)
4) Tie Line: PBX<---->Dialer (Blended lines from pbx into dialer; transferred/routed calls from ACD, auto-attendant, etc...)

Yes!! I forgot to mention----nice pictures!!