I am a IT admin given the task of installing IP hard phones at our remote office's. and I was just wandering if i needed anything else other than a license to make the phones work. We have an Avaya IP Office. :toothy:

Might want to make sure you have enough VCM's in place and licenses.

I am assuming you have a 500 chassis and a third party VPN between locations........

Is VPN the only way to for the phones to connect to the Avaya 500 chassis?

You can either build a hardware VPN between the 2 sites, which requires no license, only VCM channels (As Mike said). OR, you can buy licenses, and load a vpn client on the phones. Either way, you will need VCM's and a VPN router/concentrator at the main location.

Let us know if there are further questions.... :db:

Matt

I guess the number of VCM depends on my call volume to each location? We have a total of 6 locations in all. Most have VPN's built to them already. the average phone count is 2 to 4 phones at each location. We also have some employees that travel to other clients for a day or two out of the week and it would be nice for them to take their phone with them. what is the better solution the phone s going thru the hardware VPN or installing the VPN on the phone?

YEs, if there are no VCM"s available, and an IP phone requests one to make a call, the call will be denied.

If you find that happening, you can just order more vcm licenses against your feature key, and good to go.

For the employees that are on the go, you have a couple options.

They can carry a VPN remote phone with them....DUMB and clunky.

They can use IP Softphone, pc based phone manager pro, will work on wired only, not the greatest.

PERSONALLY, I would talk them into a "Mobility" license (If you have a PRI) This would "twin" an extension with a cell phone or home phone. WHen a call hits the extension, the cell rings. Take the call on the cell, you give appearance that you are on your extension, and can dial back to your phone system and transfer a call to another user, conference someone or even park the call and page someone.

With Windows mobile 6 phones (check availability) you can even load the One-X mobile client on the cell phone, and have a sort of "phone manager" on the cell to do the transferring etc....

All of these options have caveats and licneses, please check before ordering...

(Releasing me of any liability) :thumb: