sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Toshiba Telephones & Systems Strata CTX

We have a Toshiba Strata CTX at one of our locations with about 30 phones. We have had this system for a long time. Now that we have IT staff , I want to get them to do a little of the day to day management, change VM passwords, change display names on extensions, very basic day to day stuff. When I called the vendor who supports the phone system, he told me that it takes a " special cable and software" to connect to the phone system and only authorized Toshiba dealers and repair people were allowed to have those cables and software. He also said the phone system us very complex and would take hours of training for someone to understand how to be able to make these changes. It would be very easy for someone to make a mistake and shut the whole system down.

Thoughts ?
Suggestions ?
Thanks,

You are able to perform those basic admin functions without the need for special equipment or cables. They can be done with a Toshiba display phone. You might need to update the software on the CTX to allow some changes like name display and date/time change. And you might need to have a tech "turn on" the admin functions on a specific extension. Resetting security codes for voice mailboxes, deleting and adding mailboxes and names can be done with a touch-tone phone, assuming you have a Stratagy. Ask for the admin guides. Try another vendor if your current one is not willing to help you.

As a technician for a Toshiba dealer the honest technician answer is that the statements are partially true (I feel like Telecom Snopes). Do you know what kind of voice mail you have? If it is a Flash, IVP, or LVMU, a serial cable and adapter in addition to Stratagy Admin software will give you access to the complete programming on the voice mail. There is an administrator's mailbox that will allow you to easily preform basic tasks such as deleting/adding mailboxes, resetting mailboxes to new, reset mailbox passwords, etc.

Toshiba provides Network EManager to allow for administration of the phone system. Network Emanager can be configured with a unique login for YOU that will only allow access to the basics. We have not had to do it but that might give you peace of mind.

If you have the IES voice mail and the CIX and voice mail are connected to your LAN there is administration software to access via the VM IP address as well as the administration mailbox.


As a dealer we initially wrestled with giving our customers the software but we have come to the conclusion that this is 2015, everyone promises self administration when selling it, it needs to be done.

We have had great success with providing EManager to our customers and giving training on day to day administration.

After 1 hour of training via remote GoTo Meeting our customers can make all the changes you are asking about above. We have further encouraged customers to call us when they want to try advanced programming and I have to admit that it has worked out far better for everyone that I thought it would. We have, so far, not had a customer "break" their system.

For the voice mail we have found that the Admin mailbox provides what the customer needs and is simple.

Furthermore, an SM or SD card can be installed onto the processor and the programming backed up. As long as you religiously back up a working system before working on it, you can easily restore the programming.

Toshiba encourages us to provide the software to customers. It is prominent in their sales literature.

Maybe you can go back to the vendor and explain that it is now the norm for customers to provide admin on their equipment. You can't reasonably expect to sell equipment and not provide this. We "phone people" can be pretty conservative at times.

If that still does not provide recourse, open a dialogue with Toshiba. The vendor, if an authorized dealer, has an account manager or a sales engineer assigned to their territory. Toshiba will respond to comments from customers, good or bad. I know this from personal experience.

Sorry to be long winded but, in closing, I would encourage you to pursue this. It is the standard now. Like I comment to my colleagues, "It is not 1998 anymore. The industry has completely changed and we need to change." ~ Mike

I've put all the programs on a VMware partition - and simply pass along this (along with the free VMware Player).

But I only do this for larger companies that have an IT department, or someone who can handle this sort of stuff.

Most of our customers are still happy to pay us to make changes, but I'm perfectly happy to let them do it as well.

Sometimes, however, this causes problems - but the customer needs to shell out to have it fixed... I had one IT guy that didn't want to allow me access to an onsite computer to run the IES backup program, so I gave him the info on how to set it up - but if it's not set up correctly, the VM will save files (filling up the VM!) if the networked computer is down.

Customer paid to have it fixed...

For some customers I loaded up My Phone Manager on their PC instead of emanager. This allows some basic admin (names, buttons, ring tones), and even does a couple things that emanager can't do, like set/unset DND and call forwarding.

For the DOS based systems there is no network adapter, so using the admin software is more of a pain because you have to be connected by a serial cable (or an adapter for LVMU) There was someone selling a 3rd party network device for Toshiba voicemail systems that was posting around here. I have not used one myself.

I don't usually train the end user for hours (normally about an hour after the installation), but the eManager is not the most user friendly. While I have also not has anyone break the system, I have had the occasional customer that lost an extension while they tried to move people around and now they can't find it. Usually I find it on the virtual station card I setup for them. Swapping extensions around is surprisingly not as easy as you would imagine, even for some IT people . Most people are able to figure it out once I explain it well enough.