Many of us have worked on several different phone systems over the years however I was wondering if there was one particular brand you found to be straight forward, intuitive and basically all around easier to program than the others.

I have heard that both Samsung and ESI are easy to program.

Samsung has very direct and clear programs which allow you to view how your entire system it setup.

ESI is suppose to have a great computer interface.

On the contrary, I have heard its very difficult to program Nitsuko and a couple of the others.

I would be interested in hearing everyone's opinion on the subject.

Thanks.

ESI talks to you, and has interactive help in many parts of programming. How much easier can you get? The PC interface is also nice for remote programming and viewing the existing programming.

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| Signal Communication Systems - Central Valley, CA | Phone Systems - Fresno, CA

Nec is ok too but to most pbx guys I think its all relative. The trick is to understand the wording ie lcr or ccr and the like oh and samsung manuals have been translated 3 times from the original language so the books dont read right as opposed to nortel that reads like a kids novel (very easy to understand)

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Altcomm @ A.S.E Inc

Hey 5Years can you email me the info on how you put the image in your posts

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Altcomm @ A.S.E Inc

figured it out

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Altcomm @ A.S.E Inc

Good job. It looks nice!

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| Signal Communication Systems - Central Valley, CA | Phone Systems - Fresno, CA

nortel is easy, anything from fried rice countries(just kidding) are always dificult ie toshiba nikitsu or how ever you spell it.

ESI and The AT&T Partner are by far the easiest. However, most easy ones are not very flexable. Once you have done a system for a while (Even the Nitsuko i series) it does become easy and second nature.

Yeah, I would say the ESI is really easy. But like has been said easy usually = less flexible or capable.

That Nitsuko I-series is an insane system to program. Unless you know exactly what you want and have your manual, notes right in front of your face, you won't stand a chance.

I feel like I'm reading chinease when I look at that manual. It anyone here has programed Samsung or ESI then programed a Nitsuko I-series, you won't believe the difference in effort required to do a simple change.

I hope the newer Nitsuko are easier than the Nitsuko I-series to program?

Thanks

[This message has been edited by The_Assistant (edited March 16, 2005).]

Nope. The Aspire in some ways is harder in My opnion ESPECIALLY doing PRI translations. The i-series requires a manual almost always. But, lets be real the flow charts walk you through everything.

So to recap, the easy phone systems are:

1.ESI
2.Nortel
3.Samsung
4.

I know the Samsung is build in Dallas,Texas and I assume the other easy to program systems are also American built?


and the Difficult phones are:

1. Nitsuko.
2. Toshiba
3. _______


How about the following:

Panasonic
Avaya
Comdial
Executone-Isoetec
Inter-Tel
Iwatsu
Mitel
Telrad
Vodavi
Tie
How do these other phone system rank in degrees of difficulty? Does it pretty much still follow the American vs Asia whereas
American phone systems= easy to program
Asian phone system = awkward and difficult to program?


Thanks.

The Comdial FX/Mp5000 is easy to program. Flexible and powerful.
I show all customers and give them the programming software. Give me 30 minutes and I can get most MAC work done by endusers. Best of all (after all anyone can be a phone man) I get paid again if they screw it up.

Hey Assistant, can you please finish filling out your profile? Thanks!

Info on ESI can be found at www.esi-estech.com.

They are created in USA. ESI is headquartered in Plano, TX, on "Telecom Row". Products are assembled somewhere outside the US (I can't remember where).

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| Signal Communication Systems - Fresno, CA | Phone Systems - Central Valley, CA

Texas seem to have a lot of telephone systems manufacturers.

I think Samsung use to be located in Miami,Florida but relocated to Texas a few years ago.

I wonder why all these companies choose to manufacturer their systems in Texas?

I guess these guys can alway hire employees that worked for the competitor to get some inside information.

ESI seems to have some very user friendly and forward thinking technology and computer integration.

coral is right if you can read a flow chart you can program the i-series, man it is step by step and it even asks you questions and depending on how you answer them yes or no it takes you to a the section of the flow chart that you need.

Whatever system you work on everything becomes second nature and easier the more you program and mess with it. I like to set stuff up in a lab environment with trade-ins just so i can familiarize myself with the system incase i ever need it.

i mostly work on Vodavi stuff and it is pretty much second nature to me now, but i work on lots of other systems which is why i like to fiddle faddle with the stuff that we get as trade-ins and such.


[This message has been edited by oobie (edited March 17, 2005).]

Partner System is pretty easy to program. But like anything else, its easy if you are familiar....

Well, when I mean easy to program. I am kind of asking you to take an objective view.

In other words, I don't necessary mean that its easy for you but rather if you hired an assistant, would it be easy for you to teach them?

Is it something that would take you a few minutes, hours, days or weeks to teach someone how to use the system.

I would say that ESI you hit the ground running with programing, Samsung would probably take you a couple hours to figure out the concept, Nitsuko would probably take days or weeks to learn.

If you have been programing Nitsuko for the last 25 years, of course you are going to think it easy but if you take an objective view in comparing it to other systems you will wondering why they created such a awkward system.

In you want to make a quick change on an ESI or Samsung, it will take a few minutes. If you were trying to make a quick change on the Nitsuko, you might have to spend hours digging in the manual in my opinion.

I think the Avaya IP Office is the easiest I ever had to learn and requires the least amount of time to get up and running and train a customer to admin.

No, I think the i-series has to be the most assinine PBX programming ever invented. IMHO. I have seen WAY too many databse corruptions because of the way it does it. The Aspire is LEAP years ahead in this regard. people that don't use the real time programming are only asking for a problem. I had one tech I could NOT get from using that stupid PC pro program to PRE program on. EVERY single time he had issues with programming and it was wasted effort. Kinda like the ESI esi access IMHO.

Executone systems are really easy with there menu based programming. Corporate office was in Connecticut, now owned by Inter-Tel in Arizona.

Nortel; Norstar systems are a very flexible and reliable system. Not to bad to program, take some time and patience. Corporate office in Canada.

AVAYA partner systems are not to bad to program either.

I think iy is a matter of learning there nomenclature.

The larger systems like Nortel Option (Meridian) and ROLM/Siemens are more complex. Almost all the large PBX system they get more complecated.

Partner and Norstar are both easy as pie. So are the Panasoic KX series. Panasonic DBS, however, is a pain.

Agreed, the DBS..is like bass-ackwards to every other key system ever made in how it references things.

I can only speak from 16 years experience with this product, but Vodavi is pretty easy to work with. In addition to telephone set programming (99.9% of the system's features), you can use any terminal program to perform programming AND really informative maintenance/trace functions. Then, there's the proprietary "WIN DBA" software that makes it really easy. Problem with WIN DBA is that you are making changes to a downloaded database and then uploading them. It takes longer, but the nice thing is that you can upload only the categories that have been changed. It also lets you view a customer's programming without calling into it so you can answer customers' questions about how they are set up. I am old-school and using Procomm is the way I manage our customers' systems, but it's nice to have multiple options. I like the way Vodavi keeps everything categorized so you don't waste time looking around for potential conflicts, etc. Again, I speak from experience, but if you ask anyone about "flash" programming (from a telephone), I think they will agree that it is pretty easy and straight forward.

Easiest: Partner, Panasonic KX-T, Vodavi STS

Worst: Toshiba, or any of the old systems that used LED's for visual reference, or had no visual feedback at all.

IMHO,

Easiest
1. ESI
2. Executone
3. Samsung
4. Nortel
5. Alcatel

All of the above are pretty much equal with little bits here and there that each one does better at(or worse, perspective please). Alcatel could be a big winner except that most database changes require re-inputing the entire database, not just tweaking a certain part. Still it has a sweet tool for working with it.

Difficult or unwieldly
1. Iwatsu
2. Vodavi
3. Avaya (I just can't get the hang of it!)
4. Siemans
5. Fujitsu

Yeah, the bigger (read "More Robust") systems do tend to require more specialization in order to get the nuances down. Me simply missing a particular period (.) once brought a multi-cabinet siemans switch to it's knees and required carefully listening to German speaking engineers walk me through getting it back to database load.

A question I have is, Why do certain manufacturers insist on sending out equipment that has to be service packed (sometimes many multiples of times) before it can be loaded for the first time?

I agree that programming a Toshiba from a phone is a royal pain, but the CTX winadmin makes it soooo easy.

I agreed with junkman toshiba is more then a pain. I installed it several years ago and never again. Avaya docs could be cleared for the other then straight key install. I think the main thing is to find a system that you can get the support you need and stick with it, sooner or latter it will all come together. Hopefully sooner