sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Vodavi Telephones & Systems If I would have known

Renoed:

Vodavi does have the hard-drive version of an in-skin voice mail for the STSe. I don't use them because the flash-based one works fine for a system of that size and it's much less expensive.

Listen, please take my comments on this in the most sincere way. I certainly am not interested in throwing rocks at each other. We cringe when we hear the words "electrician" and "phone system" in the same sentence. I can speak safely on this subject because I was an electrician for eight years professionally and still do a lot of electrical work to this day, twenty years later. My son is also an electrician.

The problem is that electricians don't handle the components of phone systems as gingerly as they should. They are used to plugging a breaker into a panel and pushing as hard as necessary until it feels as if it's set.

Not to insult your installer(s), or you, but is it possible that you just have systems out there that are being installed and serviced by under-qualified people? I only ask this question because your situation appears to be a bit extreme in comparison to the norm for this product. These things just don't fail at the rates you have discussed here. YES, they do fail, but not much if installed correctly.

Renoed:

This is a follow-up. There you have it in a nutshell.

Trust me, and all the other VODAVI installers whom have taken the time to post on your issue's
I should not say this but i don't have any STS's
with UPS on them. I take personal responsibility for this install but I've not had an issue with the inskin voicemails. I been a trunk slammer for over 20 year's. I started radio/telephone in
1964 in the navy. I guess by myself i have installed hundreds of telephone systems.
I love the STSe it works fine and it is cost effective., and it will play with the big boy's
(nortel, avaya ,nec) Its all in the install and how it is programmed that will make it hum.
We are on your side but 4 or 5 installers whom have posted cant all be wrong. Right ?

Just a quick reply and then we can put this to bed.
All three systems were installed by me and not the electricians. What I meant was that our people did the electrical for the customer and they do what I tell them. One outlet, not controlled by a switch and on its own breaker.
As for me I have been an installer repairman since 1966 and have also been involved with computers/data since the early days.
Thanks everyone for the replies to my problems. I have not yet replaced the one VM that has given me the most trouble but I do have a new one ready to go. Our office system seems to have settled down because I have not had a problem here for several weeks. I also haven't heard from the other two sites so will check with them next week.
Since the local power company considers any voltage between 9 and 900 as good I have put monitors on the mains here and at one other site to see if there is any problem.
If I come up with an answer I will give everyone an update.

"Since the local power company considers any voltage between 9 and 900 as good "

That was a good one! Glad that you have maintained a sense of humor about this whole thing.

I'll throw in my two cents worth. We have about 20 inskin flash voicemail cards in service and have been installing and servicing Vodavi STS for about 3 years. We have one or two sites that just give us fits. We have found several things in our travels:

1. Make sure the card has the most recent software, 20052 is current.

2. Don't install a flash inskin anywhere with heavy usage. Vodavi even says the flash inskin wasn't designed for heavy usage.


Our heaviest use sites have the worst problems. We have one site that has now fried 3 inskin cards (yes, the system is on a UPS), the last two times causing the KSU to reboot repeatedly every 3-5 minutes. Pulling the card is the only solution to get the system usable.

Here is something I just relayed to this particular customer:

"I talked to a large distributor today, they said their voicemail system went out and they were down for 3 days. It was a $30000 voicemail system.

So I guess the moral of the story is, it's not the price of the system or who made it, but the ability to back it up and restore it if there's a problem.

The distributor didn't have a backup. And they are their own reseller of the phone system they use, they had access to the replacement part instantly, but recovering their prompts/mail/greetings took 3 days."

I also told them that they lost a $1000 card in a playing field where voicemail is routinely $3000 and up.

The inskin flash is great when it works, but a real pain if it fails. All prompts, messages, mailboxes, programming is lost, costing the customer almost as much in lost productivity to re-record all the auto-attendants and user their mailbox greetings.

I think we have convinced this customer to upgrade to the HDD version, so at least we have a real contingency plan in case it goes out again. We can guarantee 4 hour turnaround if we can reload a card. With the flash, you are just plain hosed.